Couldn’t be a fad, any more than Twilight is anything less than a evidence of a primal urge of all women.
Sometimes a rose is just a rose. Other times, it makes for really, really kinky sex.
According to famous romance novelist Ayn Rand, women love to be dominated. Also, they like smoking because it shows mankind’s mastery of fire.
I think you don’t “get” the concept of “romantacized”.
The reality of the story of Romeo & Juliette is what you described. The kids of two fueding families of psychotics go crazy obsessive and kill themselves. The romantacized version is a story about two kids so in love they would rather be dead together than separated.
Woman have a tendency towards the romantic. That is to say, they often perceive the world in terms of the narrative they create for themselves in their head.
Do you think Rose would have actually enjoyed a life with Jack as a homeless drifter?
I wasn’t talking bedroom. I was talking little acts of everyday borderline sociopathy. Such things betoken fitness in a ruthlessly competitive society, and social Darwinism is a potent aphrodisiac.
FICTION. IS NOT. REALITY.
Please reread the above statement until you can recite it in your sleep.
Though if there is anything I could really say about Twilight and 50SOG it’s that they actually represent desire! from a female perspective! as though this is a thing that actually exists, God forbid!
I know a lot of young American women who are interested in young gay love stories. Their reasoning is usually that because they’re (and this is often heterosexual girls) attracted to men, seeing two men together is double the sexy.
In order to compromise, he’d have settled down with her and they’d have clawed themselves up to a level of poverty that provided neither comfort nor freedom, as was the style at the time. They’d have fought constantly, and he’d have left town before she gave birth to their first child.
(To Answer the OP: Not this one. I can’t speak for the rest.)
As is often pointed out, especially in regard to fairy tales, literature gives us the opportunity to explore aspects of our humanity in a non-threatening way. So it could be argued that throngs of young teen girls absorbing male-dominated fantasy novels/movies are safely exploring how they feel about this type of arrangement. While they’re reading, it’s thrilling, titillating and dangerous — and it gets it out of their systems before they’re older and actual harm can be done to their lives and psyches by actually seeking out a dominating, destructive character.
For older women, who’ve already made the choice of how they want to live their lives, reading this type of fiction provides role-playing fodder and puts them in touch with their young, naive selves for whom this type of arrangement can be imagined as something as exciting and possible — without having to actually follow through on it.
How about this vaguely similar scenario* — even though lots of male adults will crow that they would have loved to get their female high-school teachers in the sack, there’s a good reason very few of these trysts actually take place. Most people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality and don’t act upon inappropriate impulses.
- On second thought I’m not sure this is particularly parallel, but what the hell.
APPEARS to be black.
Ellen Cherry, I think you’ve expressed my thoughts on the matter quite eloquently.
Even though many of my peers decry the Twilight novels for their feared influence on young minds, I just can’t find it in myself to take them at all seriously. They’re pulp. And a fad. It is hard to imagine them standing the test of time. And Edward is no more domineering and crazy than Rochester in Jane Eyre.
In the end, I liken the Twilight books to female porn. It’s only fantasy.
Oh, I do. I’m saying I don’t think the OP gets the level of escapism present in these stories. Women who fantasize about things definitely don’t necessarily want them to be true.
Except Rose would have sold that giant rock that she took from her former boyfriend for enough to give them a solid head start.
As a middle-age male, you can count me in with Dan Savage as members of “Book-of-the-Never” club for reading Fifty Shades of Grey. But in earlier threads we here did discuss Norah Vinvent’s book Self Made Man; where she convincingly disguised herself as a man and undertook some typical male experiences, including the straight dating scene.
As a self-realized lesbian since childhood, Vincent had never been exposed to straight dating from either side. What struck her was the complete power women had to dismiss men at whim, based on their default expectation of dissatsifaction. But when she was able to get one woman to tell her what she really wanted from a man, the answer was “I want a man who can drive the bus.” I think this is a common attitude.
I’d have to say this attitude has nothing to do with dominance or submission or the safe fantasy expression of either: it’s just good old treating-others-like-shit. A man has to endure rejection after rejection, and there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it because it’s the only game in town. And, having internalized hundreds of “no thank you,” “no,” and “Hell no!,” when he does hear “yes,” it’s conditonal on him instantly shedding all that self-doubt and rejection so as to perform as the horse-cock pornhammer of milady’s dreams.
I also believe there are women who’ve experienced years of rejection from men who gleefully told them they were plain or overweight, and internalized that message; and then met someone who expected them to jump right into mind-blowing sex in a highly-lit room lined with mirrors.
What the world needs is a best-seller that does for emitophilia what *Fifty Shades of Grey *did for BDSM. People can’t be trusted with each other’s sexuality, so maybe they should just come right out and puke on each other.
That’s quite a misanthropic world view.
From my experience, everyone, male or female, likes to be taken care of. That can really mean different things for each party.
For me, I am a very dominant personality and my husband wants things to be easy. So, in the bedroom, we sort of switch roles. It gives us both en escape.
But if there were a guy who tried to dominate me? That would be over before it began.
All spot-on.
Ya know where you’re goin’, Alice? TO THE MOON!
Yes, but the Edward/Rochester comparison isn’t the one to make. The Bella vs Jane comparison makes it a lot more obvious where the Twilight hatred comes in.
Re the OP: I’m very occasionally up for some playful dom/sub frolics, but it really isn’t a big turn-on for me.
In the interests of knowing what I’m missing, I have read the Anne Rice Beauty trilogy, and Twilight, and read a few chapters of the Shades of Grey book. None of them do anything for me as a reader or as a woman. Sorry I can’t help with that. When you find your typical woman, let me know - I’ve got some questions of my own to ask her.
Don’t forget, despite have a long life in which she had someone she had children and grandchildren with (the woman she is traveling with at the end is her granddaughter) when she dies she chooses to spend eternity with the guy she knew for a few days 74 years before.
I think he is more concentrating on the overwhelming success it also had among 30-50 year old housewives. Those, in my experience, outnumber the 13-year old fans. They are also the ones who are more likely to defend behaviour in Edward that they would otherwise find objectionable. I cannot count the number of otherwise completely rational women (not ‘girls’) who will pretend that Edward stalking Bella was somehow “romantic” despite the fact that the same behaviour from a guy in real life would be scary as hell.
Well, you’re done more than I have. I read the first 1.5 books in the Beauty trilogy, and I got really, really bored. I found Twilight on the clearance rack for two bucks, so I bought it but haven’t worked up the nerve to read it.
Using Fifty Shades of Grey or Twilight to judge female sexual desires is like using commercial straight porn to judge male sexual desires. While there are certainly some men who go for highly promiscuous, surgically altered women who are easily orgasmic, don’t require romance, and enjoy being treated like objects, they aren’t the majority. Thankfully, most men are looking for egalitarian partners, just like most women.
Part of the appeal of the dominant men in Twilight and other such stories is that they are a big, terrible, powerful bad who is enslaved by his loooove. He’s also, despite being a bad boy, safe. Readers of the book don’t worry about Edward raping and killing Bella. The persistent man in the romance novel or movie is driven by love rather than lust or craziness, and his love prevents him from being considered a real threat to our heroine.