I’m no TwiMom, that’s for sure. But how can I be? I haven’t read the books. Instead, I chaperoned three 12-year olds to Eclipse, and a tag along 14-year old girl (that is, she could not find her cousin at the theatre and then stuck with us… said I was a cool mom.) I sat away from them, of course, with the farthest distance between my daughter and myself.
But I can’t be a TwiMom by association anyway since my
daughter hated the first Twilight book.
I didn’t even know she had read it, since she reads about a book every
other day. It just couldn’t stand
up to the Harry Potter series, she had said, and outright dismissed it. Maybe she was too young for all the
romance?
Being a connoisseur of teen culture these days – and the fact that Eclipse topped the box office worldwide in the first five days – I took it upon myself to see the latest movie. I became curious having just listened to some conservative talk radio show (to my annoyance, my husband keeps it on in his car “to understand how the other side thinks”). The topic was about fanatical TwiMoms, and random quotes from Twilight mom blogs. The quotes were actually quite funny – moms writing about how the love/lust tension among the teens improved their marriage, or alternatively caused them to reflect on that state of their union, and so on. So, I was intrigued from a generational viewpoint.
But I have to say I was disappointed with the movie, other than a mild fascination with the scents of vampires, wolves and humans and Jacob’s in-your-face-abs. Eclipse did not conjure up fond memoires of my first love or nostalgia for a carefree time when grown up responsibilities were unknown, like it has for many TwiMoms. Oh well. (And I do have nostalgia – if not comic relief and awe of survival, when I reflect on those days.) I expected more skin and sexual innuendos and was frankly relieved it was as tame as it was.
When I caught up with my tween entourage, I asked: “So was it like the book?”
“The book was bad, but this was way worse,” said one. In the car ride home all clamor was about the next installment, which other than my daughter, the rest had read. They tried to determine what powers the offspring of Bella and Edward would entail. “Kind like a half-breed, like Hermione, in Harry Potter?” I asked. My daughter rolled her eyes, “Mom. They are called Muggles or Mudbloods.”
Right.
I’ll have to give the books a chance this summer, no doubt. Only one of the fours girls was clearly boy crazy, hence their tepid collective review. In the car, we talked about Bella’s “choice” to become a vampire after marrying Edward. Did it really seem like a choice, I wondered out loud. Or was she just going for the guy no matter what, as love can be blind type of thing? Was she really just paying into the girl does what the guy really wants to do – even though he makes it seem like a bad idea. Why would she give up her life to go to other side? How is that power? Or independence? I was talking to myself. “She’s basically choosing to be dead,” said one of the girls. The older (but young) teen filled me in. “Bella never thought she fit in and was different than other kids, so this group of vampires is where she feels comfortable. They have a cause to fight over.” The classic teen angst.
Two nights later, as a family, we saw Toy Story 3. Talk about existential angst.
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