Thank You, Sharkie792

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This month's Esquire published an article on Twilight, asserting that women love vampires because they (get ready for it) want to have sex with gay men. Jezebel.com has a great riposte to the article, with equally great reader comments. Like this one:

"We women are so complicated. Thank goodness there are smart magazine articles to tell us what's going on in our batty brains."

And this one, which starts with a quote from the Esquire article:

" 'Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because straight young women want to have sex with gay men.' Does this statement remind anyone else of Mad Libs? It is so odd and arbitrary."

These days, everyone is trying to find some deep, dark explanation for why women like Twilight. It's a complete obsession with Twilight haters and "serious" cultural critics, and their explanation is always some twisted psychopathy in women's "batty brains."

Please, people, it's not that complicated. Good story + sexy boy = we like! Throw in that percentage of the population who have a tendency toward fandom (you know, like guys who love sports, video games, or the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue), and you have the Twilight phenom. But whereas male fandom carries prestige and pride, female fandom always carries a whiff of hysteria or psychological unhealth in the wider culture. I think part of my own obsession with Twilight is rebellion against that. I want to push back against the belittling of women's taste and enthusiasms. The subtle disdain for what women value is like a sepia tone applied to a photograph which colors everything in the frame, and it's something that falsifies us, falsifies reality.

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