A Memo Concerning: Big Wood and Why Stephanie Meyer doesn't want you to grow up.

The female equivalent to the male awkward/unjustified/phantom boner is the Twilight Series. I once felt that I got the most random phantom boners in the history of Pubescence. No really, I'm comfortable with that distinction. I don't mean to be irreverent or crude when I write about this, I believe that our bodies and their functions deserve the observation and reflection I have given them. The Boner Phantom struck me often and with a violent lack of consideration. Ms. Asilstein, all two hundred pound, moo moo dress wearing, hairy wart, varicose vein cankle, sausage toe ready to explode sandal straps of her, could be talking about exponents, and for some reason my Weiner would increase in mass exponentially; the Phantom seizing on the opportunity to exploit expanding sums in my universe. And so grows (pun) one of the great paradoxes of the human condition. The angel on one ear told me I was sinning when having an awkward, Bronx-sized boner while looking at an actually attractive young lady because sins come from your mind and inevitably become actions. From the other ear an angel told me it was totally natural for me to get hard when driving along an extra bumpy road, that I was no better than my dog who used to hump the shit out of pillows. Since the last Memarandus, what may have seemed like an eternity for some of you, I have witnessed funerals, weddings, and birth in my life. Old men will scramble to open the next box of Cialis; a 13 year old will frantically flip his erection beneath his waistband because someone said “thrust” while talking about model airplanes. But during this time the course for the modern female has been particularly difficult to navigate with a semblance of dignity and self respect. This is because Stephanie Meyer wields pubescent nostalgia like a massive phallic sword, knighting middle aged women as damsel in distress nobility, and slicing back the proper growth of teenage girls. And so we have A Memo Concerning: Big Wood and Why Stephanie Meyer doesn't want you to grow up.

During my childhood, family and community were two elements in life that I was told and shown to be of unparalleled importance. They were to be respected and honored, much like in the way that gravity should when standing safely on the edge of a vast cliff. This is why Disney's “The Little Mermaid,” and the character Ariel, really confused the shit out of me. Here was a scantily-clad princess who was willing to exchange the safety of her family and well-being of her community for the affection of a dude she had seen in fleeting moments. We often identify “creeps” as people with hair dolls, or with alters filled with photos and possessions of their lust target-- this bitch had a life-sized statue of the guy she was stalking. Yet, at the same time Ariel was/is the most attractive looking female character in the entire Disney catalog of centerfolds. I mean really: a smoking hot ginger with eyes like abalone rocking a shell bikini and a stomach that could make a full grown man want to motorboat a pile of broken glass just to touch. Ariel was my object of intense prepubescent desire. She embodied something strongly opposed to my own values, yet I was intensely attracted to her. And that is precisely where we found common ground. My deviant attraction to her (how exactly does one sex-up a legless nymph?), and her dangerous elements, were very much like her attraction to a two-legged prince.

Stephanie Meyer's “Twilight Series” is by no means a unique tale, it is a reprisal and dangerous elaboration on “The Little Mermaid,” unflinchingly reinforcing prepubescent follies and delusions. I find no difference between the careless, disturbing, and shallow lust illuminated by “The Little Mermaid” and “Twilight” than the desire of a child caught in the allure of a brightly packaged piece of candy. I could put a bronx sized bow on a piece of shit and unfortunately someone would try to unwrap it. The most dangerous part of this dynamic though is that I was able to grow up and learn that broads like Ariel will never be happy, and their unhappiness is cuntageous. Stephanie Meyer though, through the course of her abhorrent trilogy, does not want you to grow up. Her attempts to write on the same plane as her supposed target audience (teenage girls) only magnifies a stunted development in adult clothes, much like Vern Troyer (mini-me) trying to drink alcohol with full sized humans.

I'm going to try and ignore the demented nature of an extended narrative disingenuously promoting abstinence while also being infatuated with blood. I'm going to try to ignore a narrative that obsesses over the hiding of unwanted blood, of keeping said blood clean, and that the appearance of blood suddenly makes the female protagonist vulnerable. This is because the correlation between this obsession and the pubescent fears of menstruation are too obvious and the message too disturbing. But honestly I can't ignore this, the message is quite clear: “Girls, as soon as you have your period, boys will begin to assault you. The only ones who are safe are the ones who aren't attracted to you.” Unfortunately logic then dictates that the only safe boys are either gay or are the ones who aren't nice to you. The fact of the matter is, you don't empower teenage girls, or help them develop into functioning adults by making them fear interactions across gender lines. I'm sorry I cannot ignore a narrative that condones suicide attempts as a means to gain attention, the idea that women exist in a perpetual state of needing to be saved by men, the helplessness of attraction to love interests who would be otherwise considered abusive/engaging in criminally obsessive manners, the promotion of the idea that a female only reaches their fullest potential when producing babies.

At some point I have to give respect for Stephanie Meyer for so fully capturing what she feels is the pubescent condition of females. But that point holds the same strength as the period at the end of a run-on sentence-- a forgotten mark, almost like an apology, placed far after the damage has already been done, but in the end just a reminder that someone fucked up. For Meyer the pubescent female condition is about rejection, not feeling good enough, being ignored, and then when finally given attention, realizing that the greatest show of affection is something that will destroy her. Essentially that you must destroy your ego and self respect in order to do something that you have always been told is wrong and immoral. If you were to write the male version of “Twilight” it would be about boners, having them explode randomly, and of the fear of putting them in anything with a pulse, even though you may have to pay for shit..

I guess my problem is that I believe people can be better than that.

I cannot blame the attraction to the “Twilight” series by teenage girls. It offers reassurances that their fears and preoccupations are normal for that period in life. That's the key though, it should just be a period in life. Puberty is a very difficult and rough time in life for both men and women because those fears and preoccupations characteristic of the stage hold no value in successfully relating to other people. Helplessness, selfishness, visceral dependencies on other people, these are things to grow out of in order to be happy adults; but, unfortunately they are celebrated within the “Twilight” series. The danger of Stephanie Meyer's narrative is that it crafts these elements nostalgically, it causes adults to yearn for those days and fails to show teens the dangers of behaving this way. The danger of nostalgia is that it idealizes the past and allows us to forget that in reality the way things used to be weren't really that great, that's why they aren't around anymore. If everyone decided to be helpless, selfish, and viscerally dependent on each other, we'd all be screwed. Nostalgia is hypnosis, and too many of my peers have been duped. Now I am not implying that everyone who has read this series has developmentally disabled themselves, but I do offer one simple question in assessing the effects of this narrative on you. Has your reading of “Twilight” played a role in helping you improve your relationships with real, healthy adults, or has it made you yearn for something that has never and will never exist.