Nov 27 2008
Teen sex is not compulsory.
In the book (and the film), Twilight, a seventeen-year-old girl falls in love with a very, very handsome 107-year-old man. Yes, he’s a vampire, but he’s still been alive for about 107 years.
The complaint I’ve read over and over in reviews about the book (and the film) is that it’s too “sweet”. That could have two meanings, and reading further through the reviews, I have found both complaints.
1. The reviewer is complaining that the story centers too much on the romantic aspects of gazing into each other’s eyes, holding hands, talking for hours, and the sexual tension that comes at the very beginning of a relationship before anything physically intimate has occurred.
That criticism I could understand. This is a matter of personal preference in storytelling. I will never forget walking out of the movie and seeing a father who was forced to go went with two teenaged girls. The girls were smiling and talking a mile-a-minute. The father looked seriously pained. Fine. Funny, and fine.
2. Then, there is the other kind of review where the reviewer is criticizing the story because Bella and Edward do not have sex in the first novel. They’re in love, therefore, it is “unrealistic that they wouldn’t have sex”.
Garbage. As a society, if we have reached a point at which a 17-year-old is required to have sex when she is in a relationship, then we are in serious trouble and there are a lot of people who need to get their minds out of the gutter–and this is coming from an erotic romance writer.
Unless the word “erotic” is printed on the cover or the spine of a story, sex is not compulsory in a story. And the day when sex is required of a 17-year-old girl will be the day our culture has failed.
I agree completely.
Want to know MY problem with the story? My problem is the fact that a 107-year-old is dating a 17-year-old girl.
“But he’s a vampire, so–”
I’m aware of why and how he LOOKS 17. Regardless of his body’s metabolism and appearance, he still has 107 years of knowledge and experience and world-weariness under his belt. He’s had 107 years to mentally mature himself, and he just happens to look 17. Lucky him — now he gets to put all those years of experience and still-youthful veneer to use by dating impressionable, 17-year-old girls even though he’s anything but.
It’s just like that movie “Big”. Don’t try and convince me of otherwise — from a story’s point of view, a 30-year-old woman had sex with a 12-year-old boy. Period.
Any way you slice, I still see it as pedophilia, and that’s wrong. I say thank God they DIDN’T have sex.
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/90374
Speaking of which, as a 27-year-old virgin, I’m pretty appalled that some people consider it “unrealistic” for teens to date without having sex… and that they’d bad-mouth a movie/book over it.
Yes, I just admitted to being a virgin. Want to fight about it?
No fighting at all. That’s another mark of a free society. In certain parts of the world, essentially, no one is allowed to be a virgin. Parents marry their children off, birth control is illegal, and offspring are demanded. Sexuality is dictated by others–and that’s wrong.
Which is somewhat my point in the post.