New Year’s Resolutions (because everyone else is doing it)

Usually, I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. I could never keep them, and I’ve yet to meet anyone else who could. That and they never really seemed that special to me.

But this year, I am making a New Year’s resolution. I’m resolving not to think about the future any farther ahead than this summer. Beyond that, I’m not going to think about it.

This might seem like a really irresponsible resolution, but I really think that it’s for the good of my sanity. As a junior in college, I’m constantly being asked what I want to do when I graduate. Professors ask me about it all the time. My friends are always talking about looking for jobs next year or applying to graduate school. They all seem to have their lives figured out, and I really don’t, and it drives me nuts.

I could go to graduate school, and in many ways, that’s what I’d really like to do. I always feel lame when I say this, but I love learning things. I love researching. And then I love writing about what I’ve learned. Sure, it’s grueling. Sometimes it can be tedious. But in the end, it also feels very satisfying. In many ways, I could see myself as a professor somewhere teaching classes and writing books and never leaving the safe haven of a university. Of course, this is a very idealized vision of a professor’s life. In reality, I know that I’d spend a lot of my time fighting for funding and lecturing to students who really don’t give a damn about the cultural significance of literature or the meaning of poetry. I also know that a lot of what I wrote would be read by other academics…and it wouldn’t go much further than that. In the end, I sometimes wonder if I would have just amassed immense quanities of knowledge for myself without doing anything useful or beneficial with that knowledge. Still, I’ve only got one life to live, and if learning makes me happy, I might as well spend my life doing just that. After all, there are certainly worse things that I could do with my existence.

On the other hand, I’d really like financial independence. I love my family, I really do, but I’ve been mooching off them long enough, and I feel embarassed whenever I have to ask for money. If I got a job right out of college, I could (hopefully) get my own place and a car. I could also get a guinea pig. (It sounds like an absurd dream, owning a guinea pig, but I’ve had three of the little furballs ever since I was five, and my last guinea pig died about a year ago. I haven’t bothered to replace him because, being a college student, I’m not in a good position to have pets, but I’m so used to having a guinea pig that I miss my old one.) I also want to have some fun with my life, though I’m not exactly sure what that means. I guess it means not coming home and breaking out the books for the rest of the evening and spending the night curled up with some sort of Norton Anthology of Literature. I guess it means being able to go out and have a few drinks without thinking, “Shouldn’t I be drafting a paper right now?” I guess it means having time to get involved in things that aren’t related to homework. If I got a job right out of college, I could do these things. If I went to graduate school, I’d come out with mountains of debt. Of course, I’d like to get a job that I would enjoy and find meaningful too.

So, right now, I’m stuck between wanting to go to graduate school and wanting to get a job as soon as I get my B. A., and I can’t make up my mind. Most of the time, I just end up feeling worthless and depressed because, unlike my peers, I don’t seem to have any pratical and useful plan that will guide the course of my life. And this is where this summer comes in. This summer, I’d like to get some sort of writing internship. It’s a good plan either way, because it will give me some praticial experience in the job world and it will also look good on a grad school application. Also, if I spend the summer interning and find out that I like it, I’ll probably end up deciding to work right out of college. If I hate interning and spend the entire summer wishing I was back at school, then I’ll know that I’ll probably be better off going to grad school. But until then, there’s really no point in making up my mind one way or the other.

So, New Year’s Resolution: Prepare for this summer, but don’t worry about what’s going to come after it.

Twitards and Fat Cows: What Criticisms of Twilight Reveal About our Society’s Views of Women

First of all, let me make one thing clear: I can’t stand Twilight or the subsequent books that were written by Stephenie Meyer after the success of Twilight. I have not seen the movies, but I hate them too because, if not for them, this fad might have died out sooner, and I wouldn’t have to listen to people gush over going to see the midnight showing of New Moon. But, as I can’t really criticize the movies because I haven’t seen them, I’m going to criticize the books. The books are demeaning to women by telling them that they should lose their sense of self and sacrifice their future for a man. They are also beyond horribly written because they lack the two most basic elements need to create a story–plot and characterization. This isn’t to mention all of the other just plain weird stuff that goes on in them, like all the sexual frustration and borderline pedophilia. I also have nothing against Mormon writers, as I think Orson Scott Card is pretty good, though I disagree with his politics, but Stephenie Meyer goes too far. Or rather, she doesn’t go far enough. There are a few intriguing questions raised in Twilight about vampires’ souls or lackthereof, and even though I don’t believe in souls, for purely philosophical reasons, I would have enjoyed that discussion much more than several hundred pages of: “Edward, I love you! I can’t live without you!” “No, Bella, I love you more! I can’t live without you!” “Have sex with me!” “No! Marry me!” “No!” Instead of using religion to ask some good questions and come up with some at least thought-provoking answers, Meyer decided to reduce religion to an abstinence-only message and a mutual distrust on the part of the Cullen coven (the Mormons) and the Volturi (the Catholic Church).

But there are hundreds of sites out there that will tell you the same thing that I’ve just told you about Twilight. Some will go into a lot more depth and demystify exactly why these plot-less, insipid books are so popular. I actually want to take a critical look at the criticisms of Twilight, and to do so, I would like to direct your attention here. If you haven’t read any such criticisms of Twilight, I recommend Cracked.com’s analysis of it simply because it’s brief, amusing, and says pretty much the same things that other people who don’t like Twilight have said. If you’re already familiar with criticisms of Twilight, you’ll probably enjoy it anyway.

What a lot of criticisms of Twilight claim about the books is that they are the result of one of Stephenie Meyer’s sex dreams and are meant to be a form of soft-core porn for sexually repressed young women and housewives, as well as a “safe” outlook on sexuality for tween girls who are just starting to have exhilerating but also confusing and scary urges of their own while being the objects of equally scary tween boys’ urges. This all makes a lot of sense, especially if you read the books and count how many times Edward’s Adonis-like physical appearance is mentioned (and then lose count of how many times Edward’s Adonis-like physical apperance is mentioned because it is mentioned too many times to count). It also makes sense if you look at the women and girls who are fans of the series, and I’m sure we all know at least one of them, if not more. The criticism seems to be accurate, and the consensus of the critics is that these books are nothing more than outlets for sexually frustrated and/or repressed women/girls. Some people even go so far as to say that Stephenie Meyer herself is sexually frustrated. I can’t remember where, but on one anti-Twilight forum, I read a comment that told Stephenie Meyer that if she lost some weight, she might actually get some and spare the world her pathetic attempts at writing. (I didn’t approve of this comment on two grounds: one, I happen to think that Stephenie Meyer, for all her horrible writing, is actually a very attractive woman, and two, it’s the straw man fallacyand heaven knows you don’t need it because there is plenty to tear apart in those books.)

At the core of this criticism lies a lot of assumptions that our society has about women and their sexuality. The first is the comparisons between Twilight and porn that claim that Twilight is porn because it merely acts as escapism into an unrealistic sexual fantasy. Yeah, that description does fit Twilight. So, what we have here are a bunch of female fans being criticized for enjoying porn. Okay, I really don’t like porn as I think it’s demeaning to women, and that’s a post for another day, but I am sensing a double standard here. I couldn’t find a good statistic on the number of Twilight fans in the Western world, but I’m guessing there are plenty of women out there who aren’t fans of the books or haven’t read them. However, this study shows that there are pratically no men who have not viewed pornography. Female Twilight fans are ridiculed for being turned on by lengthy descriptions of unrealistically perfect Edward Cullen and his stony, cold body. Meanwhile, men everywhere are being turned on by digitally altered and enhanced pictures/videos of models’ enormous breasts and pouty lips, and no one is criticizing these men. No one is calling these men shallow or sexually repressed for watching porn. No one is writing articles or blog posts about how ridiculous or underdeveloped the plots and characters of porn films are. No one is saying that the porn industry in the US does not deserve to make $10 billion dollars a year, while critics begrudge Stephenie Meyer the $5 million dollars that the first Twilight movie made her. (I don’t have any stats on how much she’s made from the books. Sorry.)  Why? Because being turned on by unrealistic fantasies is something that men are allowed to do but women are not.

The criticisms of Twilight also often highlight our society’s taboo on female masturbation. Lots of critics say that the books are nothing more than a masturbatory aid for women or that Stephenie Meyer was fingering herself the whole time she wrote them. This may or may not be the case, I really don’t know, but the fact is that women are being criticized for masturbating. Men masturbating, however, is considered a fact of life–something normal and natural and expected. When women masturbate, however, people think that there is something wrong with them. For instance, to reference the straw man argument about Stephenie Meyer’s weight earlier, one assumes that she is so fat that she can’t get anyone to sleep with her, so she has been reduced to jerking off to her own books. Men are never critcized like this, at least not that I’m aware. If a man masturbates, no one assumes that there is something wrong with him and that he can’t get anyone to sleep with him. He’s just a man being a man. When women masturbate, it’s because they’re desperate.

So, while the criticisms of Twilight go a long way in explaining just everything that is wrong with this series, they also reveal our society’s double standards for men and women’s sexualities. Mainly, if Twilight is porn, then when women like porn, they are stupid and silly and the porn that they are enjoying is criticized for its lack of plot and characterization. When men like porn, however, they are, well, just men, and if the porn video that they are watching happens to have a bad plot and bad characterization, they weren’t watching it for those things to begin with. If a woman masturbates, then she must be doing so because there is something wrong with her that keeps her from getting a sexual partner. If a man masturbates, however, he is just being a normal, healthy man. And I think that these double standards might give us yet another clue as to why the Twilight books have become so popular.  

In our society, women are constantly being judged by men. Even when men aren’t around, women wonder what men think of them. They look in the mirror and view their bodies through the lens of the internalized male gaze. They view their behavior through the lens of patriarchal myths of who and what women should be. They put on masks to make themselves more acceptable in the male institutions of out society, be they coroporate or religious or governmental institutions. Women, whether they are conscious of it are not, are living in a man’s world, and rarely do they find a man who sees them as a human being and who lets them be who they are outside of society’s expectations for them. Rarely do they find a man who loves them instead of judging them, who is gentle to them instead of critical of them. Rarely do they find a man who wants the best for them instead of insisting that they be at their best for him.

And then, these women find Twilight on their bookstore and library shelves. They take it home for a bit of light reading, and suddenly they can’t put it down because here is Edward Cullen, who isn’t like all the other men. Edward Cullen tells them that they are beautiful, even though they’re sure that they’re plain and unattractive. Edward Cullen tells them that he loves them for who they are. Edward Cullen finds their weaknesses adorable and doesn’t expect them to always be strong and stoic.

Granted, Edward Cullen is also something of a stalker, who will climb up to your window and watch you sleep. He will want to suck your blood until you die. He will treat you like a pet at best and like a member of his own personal cult at worst, because he likes to control where you go and who you see. He will deny you your own sexuality. He will whine and pout when you don’t do what he wants. And he will tell you that he knows better than you how to run your life and your decisions. He’s not at all empowering to women. He’s pretty terrible, but at face value and through Bella’s eyes, he is wonderful, and this is only as far as most women go with the series. When it comes to fulfilling immediate needs for acceptance, belonging, and love, a lot of women are willing to take the chilling comfort of Edward Cullen’s arms over the difficult and often exhausting struggle for empowerment.

I’m not saying that Twilight fans are stupid for wanting a little comfort. I’m saying that it’s understandable why they would want that comfort and be willing to take it from an obsessive control-freak, who at least on the surface seems nice. The reason that Twilight fans fall under Edward’s spell is one of the same reasons why many women fall under the spell of abusive men–low self-esteem. In a society that is critical of them because they are women, that constantly measures them against all the ideas of what they should be and does not allow them to freely be who they are, a lot of women are insecure. They want someone special, they want a special, sparkling superman (who, because of his superhuman strength is a man above all other men and therefore the most qualified to judge and whose judgements must be respected by other men) to tell them that their insecurities are silly, that they are loveable just the way they are, and that they are physically gorgeous. Society never tells them this. Patriarchy ideology never tells them this. But Edward Cullen does, and for a moment they feel confident, loved, and beautiful…until they remember that he’s just a boy in a book.

While Edward might be a band-aid that covers up the problems of women’s insecurities, he is hardly the cure. Overall, he does more damage than he does good, by giving young women unrealistic and undesirable aspirations for their (future) boyfriends. (One could argue that porn does the same thing for young men and their girlfriends.) What we need are messages for young women that tell them to feel confident in who they are as they are. We need messages that affirm them as human beings who deserve to be loved and respected instead of needing to grovel to the dictates of Edward Cullen in order to be rewarded with love and respect. We need to teach girls that telling themselves that they are beautiful is as affirming or even more affirming than having a boy tell them that they’re beautiful. And we also need to help these girls come into their own as sexual beings free from double standards and without the repressive messages (“your sexuality is bad and wrong and you need me to control it for you”) from Edward Cullen. If we are ever able to overcome these problems in society, we will no longer need Twilight.

Speaking Up

I am not, by nature, a shy person. I love to talk. I especially love to voice my opinions. I also love picking apart other people’s arguments and criticizing them. This usually serves me pretty well, especially in classes based on theory.

However, last quarter, I found myself in a theory class that was unexpectedly difficult. It was Classical Social Theory, it was an upper level class, and I, a newly declared sociology minor, had found myself surrounded by seasoned seniors who had four years of sociology training and were ready to go on to graduate school. It was more than a little overwhelming. For the first time in my life, I thought about dropping a class. I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

Fortunately, the professor of the class encouraged me to try it at least until the first exam, on which I did very well. That should have been encouragement to me, as I’m willing to bet that I did better on the exams than some of the seniors and the majors. I’m also willing to bet that I put more thought into the material than some of them (to keep up with them, I had to). However, the fact that they were seniors, that they’d taken more classes than I had, and that I was outside of my comfort zone, made me freeze up in class. Usually, in discussion-based classes, I don’t shut up. In this class, I hardly said anything.

And I regret that now, because in retrospect, I had a lot of good observations and opinions. I also shouldn’t have been afraid of speak up, even if what I said was wrong, because at least I would have learned something. I should have had more confidence in myself.

Moral of the story: don’t be afraid to say what you think, even if you don’t feel qualified. As long as you’re humble enough to listen to what other people say too and accept constructive criticism, you can’t say anything wrong.