Twilight Hysteria – Women’s Fascination With Teenage Romance
Millions of women in their 30s, 40s and over follow the romantic escapades of 18-year-old Bella in the teen romance series known as Twilight. What, we may wonder, is the emotional birthday that drives them?
Feminists hate the fact that Freud described many of his female patients as hysterical. Although I consider myself a feminist, I will venture to say that I think the hysteria aptly explains the frenzy of grown women for Twilight. I have recently been asked if the Twilight phenomenon has anything to do with The Cinderella Complex. In that book, published in the 1980s, I documented women’s psychological fear of independence, their deep desire to be saved. Feminists at the time took issue with my theory, and yet here we are, a quarter of a century later, with something akin to mass hysteria reflecting women’s fear that without the love of a powerful man their lives would be for nothing. sense. Considering the enormous gains women have made, both professionally and financially, how could the romantic illusion still be so powerful?
As a psychoanalyst, I began to think clinically on Twilight Twitter. I think one aspect of women’s identification with young Bella is her selflessness. As soon as Edward shows interest in Bella, she backs off. “I couldn’t imagine anything about myself that could be interesting,” she says.
“I know exactly how you feel,” accomplished women tell me. And yet, Bella’s is the lament of a girl with few interests and curiosities about life, let alone herself. Despite herself, she gets the boy (or, in this case, the vampire). Women find doubting Bella’s romantic success reassuring. Also, oddly enough, they are drawn to the idea of her ungratified sexuality. (I can imagine Freud at his grave stroking his beard and saying, “I told you so.” Repressed sexuality, in her way of thinking, was at the root of women’s hysteria.)
A central theme for hysterics, as psychoanalysts understand the phenomenon today, is the damaging experience of never having been taken seriously. It makes such individuals feel anchorless, feeling “virtually weightless and floating, drawn here, repelled there, captivated first by this and then by that,” as noted psychoanalyst David Shapiro wrote. Little seems rooted in deep interest or purpose. The resulting sense of insubstantiality can leave those suffering from hysteria vulnerable to the influence of others. Shapiro described it, back in the ’60s, as a “vision of Prince Charming’s life and everything will be alright.”
Anyone who doubts that many women still think this way need only check out the OMG sensitivity flooding blogs and chat rooms. My God, Edward is too beautiful, too fabulously strong, even “gentleman.” Bella is so lucky to have caught it; now, like Cinderella, the poor girl can look forward to a lifetime of happiness. No matter the danger involved in crushing Edward’s creepy long teeth, he is the prince.
When I work in therapy with women who are troubled by adolescent dreams of romance, my hope is to make them curious about themselves, to start wondering if there might not be some powerful thoughts and feelings of their own that lie beneath the dream. Shallow brush fires that distract them. Eventually, if things go well, they come to experience themselves as substantial, interesting, and beautiful, and are no longer inclined to gravitate toward media images of male power.
If there’s one main reason women care about young Bella from Twilight, I think it’s this: society still doesn’t take women seriously. As a result, many women don’t take themselves seriously.
The cultural conditioning of girls persists. Think of the craziness surrounding “princess parties” if you want proof that notions of romance still hold sway. She is Barbie reincarnated, only the princess is more ephemeral, weightless, even less aware of her own substance.
In the 1970s we were concerned about Barbie’s influence on our daughters and tried to lessen her power over them. Today’s mothers really love the princess. They spend millions so their daughters can flutter in miniature dresses and tiaras looking and acting like one.
My concern is that as long as society continues to insist on a fangless image of femininity, girls will continue to find it difficult to connect with their own core and will grow up captivated by “harmless” stories of romantic obsession.
By paying so much attention to romance, women only feed the fantasy that they need an idealized Other to make the world go round. In the end, they’re left yearning, the glass slipper of adult love completely slipping away.