Stephanie Meyer and the New Mormon Anti-Feminism

Ah...the title of that already sounds like the rant of a leftist in the New Yorker doesn't it? Fret not, my friends...this is very good news.

So who knew that a Mormon housewife would be able to tap into the collective psyche of teenie-boppers girls world-wide? One might ask what makes them so gullible, so predictable, so prone to manipulation? But this, my friends, misses the point entirely.

The first common understanding we must reach is that the Twilight series is not only fundamentally anti-feminist but that it spits in the face of the feminist critique at every turn. The heroine is vulnerable and wildly susceptible to Edward's innate goodness. She's a tad erratic, always pushing Edward to go further than he wants to...upon which he, the level-headed priesthood holder that he is, always steadies the rudder and returns their impassioned love back to the boiling cauldron of teenage hormones.

So what would make girls scream over repressiveness? It seems downright puritanical when compared with even other relatively mild romances like Titanic or even your B+ grade chick flick. Never mind the relatively graphic battle scenes, scenes that should send your average girls back to watch Grey's Anatomy with her roommates, shuddering at how "scary" it all was. Instead, they scream with delight as Edward battles back evil. And no, you are not in the Twilight Zone...you're in the zone of piles of money based on seemingly ham-handed cinema that hardly rises above Dudley Do-right and his sniveling counterpart of a villain.

So what has happened to the fair daughters of Hannah-Montana America? Welcome to the next phase of American feminism, a backlash against a feminism that has been sucked dry of its femininity through the vampire of nihlism. The young women are simply exhausted with the feminist mantras. American feminism feels it will succeed when women can be as great of CEOs, presidents, doctors, and lawyers as men are. The success of Twilight shows a younger feminism bucking against women who have forgotten that being erratic can be charming, that being a clutz can be loveable, and that men can be something more than a super-tight "life partner."

Oh don't you worry...the old school 60s feminists rail against Twilight...Bella won't even get an abortion to save her life, after all!. But no matter to the adoring fans...Bella is loved. That's what matters.

Just as Harry Potter has defined a childhood, so too can Twilight define womanhood for the coming decade. Don't be surprised if in about 10 years, you see the now-young women expecting a little more from their male acquaintances if they want the time of day. When men get assertive, they might wonder why he's not like a better gentleman (as the name, "Edward" subconsciously rings through their mind). Meyer's popularity might just be enough to cause a slight tectonic shift in the gender dynamics in America.