Are Baby Vampires Poisonous?

If you have contact with the world of 13-year-old girls and don't have some kind of debilitating nervous disorder that prevents you from absorbing information from your environment, then you must have noticed the Twilight books. For months, teen and tween girls have been giving themselves shoulder problems, carrying around these 800-page novels, ferreting them off to bedrooms to be devoured and then savored in an immediate rereading. They tape pictures of Edward, the vampire hearthrob, in their lockers, they giggle knowingly about Edward's bad-boy edge and sigh over his sweet and selfless protectiveness.

Twilight and the fan clubs surrounding it are part of a private teen girl world in which parents are awkward transgressors. Most parents don't read along with their children. They read book reviews, piece together the advice of friends and teachers, and do their best. "A teenage girl falling in love with a vampire boy and then they have vampire sex and a vampire baby who isn't really a vampire but tries against her will to kill her mother anyway? Well, at least they're reading."

I first became aware of the books when a mother of twin 12-year-old girls asked my opinion of their appropriateness. The mom's friend had recommended the books as a summer read, and then, a few weeks later, had left a frantic voicemail for the mother. "Don't let them read any more! In the 4th book, they have vampire sex! And she gets pregnant!!" What did I think? Well, I've been known to enjoy horrible teen girl entertainment. I've seen The Princess Diaries (1 and 2), Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (1 and 2), High School Musical (just 1), etc. So, committing to 2,000 pages of vampire lit didn't sound too painful.

Twilight is addicting. It's a drug that you know is beneath you. It's like crack or cheap chocolate or watching The Hills at the gym. I stayed home on a Friday night to finish New Moon then called my friend (a grown woman) to commiserate about how much more we both liked Jacob the werewolf than Edward the vampire. Jacob was kind of human and his clothes kept coming off when he morphed and, as an American Indian, he was in touch with nature and spirituality, and he was snarky and funny, and he could give her a kind of normal life with kids and a house and everything, except for the prowling the woods as a wolf thing. Way better than Edward, a cheesy piano-playing stalker who shows up unannounced and secretly watches you while you sleep and actually wants to eat you. Later that week, I overheard a fierce debate between two seventh-grade girls about just this question. It made me wonder why all of us were so wrapped up in this story. Even as we laughed at ourselves for caring, we stayed up late with the books, read them over our cereal, and cared genuinely how they would end.

Twilight stars Bella, an abnormally bland girl, who has next to no personality of her own. She's pale and quiet and a good cook but doesn't care about cooking. Her most defining feature is that she is a new student at her school who doesn't want to participate in the teen world before her. She seems to be beyond that. Bella only becomes interesting when she meets and attracts Edward, an overtly brooding and irresistible boy in her class. They fall in love. Luckily for Bella, it turns out that Edward is a sweet, perfect boyfriend... you know, underneath the vampire stuff. Bella seems to be the aggressor in their relationship, begging him to turn her into a vampire and then striking a bargain that will allow her to experience sex as a human before she changes. He's the one who insists on marriage first.

Critics have focused on the sexual messages implicit in vampire stories and figured in the author's Mormon beliefs to conclude that the books are a morality tale about premarital sex. Waiting makes it better. Some parents are troubled by the whole subject, but the truth is that all vampire stories carry implicit messages about sex. Dracula seduces his female prey, and their attraction to him kills them. So, young women, stay away from worldy, charming men.

Here's the problem with Twilight: classic vampires like Nosferatu and Dracula are sexy and dangerous. In Twilight, the danger part gets buried because Edward's love for Bella makes him able to resist his dark nature. So Bella (and we readers) ignore the danger and root for Edward to take away her life so that they can be together. Yeah, he's a vampire, but he's a vegetarian and basically a good guy, so it's OK that he does things worthy of restraining orders: sneaking into Bella's room to watch her sleep without her knowledge, asking his sister to watch Bella and then kidnap her when he has to go out of town, brooding about his lack of self-control, which beat Bella to a pulp on their wedding night. Bella forgives him for these things because it's clear that he has her best interst at heart. Yeah, I saw that Lifetime special too.

What scares me is how easy it is for us to fall for Edward and to dismiss Bella's human life. Her crippling need for Edward is more exciting than anything else in her character. At several points in the books, I was struck by phrases like, "I remembered when I'd met him -- when my life had truly begun." She can't believe that someone as wonderful as Edward would be interested in her, and neither can we. Why are we so willing to accept and even identify with a thinly disguised helpless waif of a heroine?

In Eclipse, when Edward abandons Bella (in order to protect her from life as a vampire), Bella tumbles into depression. What little spark she had brought to the story disappears, and she becomes an empty shell, going through the motions of her life. Without Edward, she doesn't matter. That is, until she meets another guy to lean on. Jacob, Bella's werewolf best friend, falls in love with her and becomes the "sun" in her otherwise dark universe. And we sigh with relief -- at least she has someone.

In the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, Bella finally puts her foot down. After the wedding, before she becomes a vampire, she becomes pregnant with Edward's half-vampire baby. The baby is taking Bella's life as it grows, starving her, breaking her bones, and eventually causing internal hemmhoraging. It's a slightly exaggerated version of real pregnancy. When Edward and his family see what's happening to Bella, they want to "get it out of her," but Bella nobly refuses, preparing to sacrifice herself for the half-vampire baby. This tendency to sacrifice self has been part of Bella all along, but it's been directed toward Edward. In the fourth book, she grows from a self-sacrificing girlfriend to a self-sacrificing wife and mother. It's the main thing that she does. Frankly, I'm disappointed. Even if Edward is willing to settle for Bella, should we? And should it bother us that tween girls do?

In The Atlantic's December issue, Caitlin Flanagan describes the private quality and developmental importance of reading to girls of this age. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/twilight-vampires As Flanagan writes, we (girls) explore romance and sexuality by reading about them, trying on the lives of the characters that we read about and identify with. We dive into books -- all kinds of books -- with abandon and vulnerability. We still haven't caught on that the sweetest, most innocent characters will be killed off, and we're truly, honestly angry if the heroine rejects her rightful hero. I remember growling at my copy of Little Women from my airplane seat when Jo turned down Laurie. I still haven't forgiven her.

When I ask 13-year-old girls about the appeal of the Twilight books, they blush. I suppose they know that many adults don't approve of them reading about vampire sex and half-vampire babies. But then, as they describe Edward and compare him to Jacob, they come alive. They describe the rules of the vampire world with finesse and precision. When you become a vampire, you become a more beautiful and perfect version of yourself. Talents that you have as a human are magnified. Werewolves and vampires have been enemies for centuries, but they can learn how to live in peace. Half-vampire babies are really cute and powerful but not poisonous. Well, the girls aren't. The boys are.

But if you ask them to evaluate Bella's character and her relationship with Edward, they retreat with a shrug. "It's just a fantasy. It's not real."

How real is our fantasy life in our teens? What do we absorb, and what do we ignore? Are these books just froth, or do they hold some kind of poison that becomes part of us? And what does our attraction to them say about us?