I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula when I was 8 years old. While it affected me to the point where I went to sleep with a blanket wrapped around my neck for the next few years, I never expected to one day go through the vampire epidemic we’re experiencing now.
Twilight, True Blood, Being Human, Vampire Diaries and The Vampire’s Apprentice, not to mention the hundreds of spin-off teen vampire novels, are nothing new. Humans have had a fascination with vampires for a long time now — we’re just currently experiencing a particularly concentrated wave of vampire-themed entertainment. Mainly to blame, I would argue, is Twilight, which gives false hope to young tweens everywhere. While in the past, people enjoyed horrifying vampires, vampire hunters, wooden stakes and coffins, we’re now expected to sympathize with these mythical creatures, or even date them.
Basically, Twilight is every woman’s dream in one badly written, but strangely addictive, series. A ridiculously good-looking boy-man, rich and generous, is instantly in love with and devoted to you and willing to lay down his life for you. He doesn’t expect or push for any favors in return; in fact, he insists you get married first. True Blood, while entailing a different set of circumstances, features yet another vampire irresistibly compelled to love, cherish and protect a perfectly average human. This fairy tale is so entrancing that the two lead characters — the vampire and the innocent girl — are now actually engaged in real life. And now Vampire Diaries, an absolutely horrific CW series featuring — you guessed it — a “good” vampire irresistibly attracted to an absolutely-gorgeous-but-doesn’t-know-it, emotionally damaged human. I’ve had enough.
My theory is that women everywhere, whether they admit it or not, are dying for the male characters that these stories portray. They are the perfect men, akin to Disney princes and knights on white horses. This is not a vampire obsession — this is an obsession with the subconscious, society-driven hope that men like this actually exist somewhere. There’s a reason I’ve heard a dozen girls claim that they have absolutely no idea why they find Robert Pattinson so attractive — it’s not him, it’s the character he plays.
I can personally attest that I was actually angry that he was cast as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter, and then Edward in Twilight, because I didn’t think he was good-looking enough (I can feel you judging me), but when watching him in Twilight, I could barely concentrate on the horrendous special effects (I saw it with my 11-year-old sister, but let’s face it, I would’ve seen it whether she was with me or not. In fact, my mom, my best friend and her mom were all there watching it, too, and also hiding behind the “just watching it with the 11-year-old” defense).
At first, I was somewhat perturbed by this fantasy world that my little sister was being subjected to, but then I decided that every little girl should be allowed to pretend that they would one day meet a nice vampire boy. After all, when my friends and I were little, we wanted to be princesses — same story, different characters.
Bethany Wynn is a junior French language and literature and sociology major. She can be reached at wynn at umdbk dot com.
