The Twilight Trip

Over Winter Break, the family and I spent quite a bit of time parked in front of the TV watching movies. The DVD player is the extent of my connection with popular culture. In the past, the wife kept me plugged into “the real world” so that I could at least hold a conversation over dinner with colleagues. She’s not what anyone would call “plugged in” to contemporary culture, but while she at least orbits, I’m like the dot in that photo of the galaxy that says “you are here” — somewhere in the outer fringes.

Recently, however, our daughter has become the family’s Sacagawea, guiding us (mainly me) through the wilderness of popular culture. Last month she insisted that we watch the first two movies of the Twilight Series, Twilight and New Moon, because she had just finished reading the books.

I must admit that I had no interest in watching the movies. Don't get me wrong: I love vampires, but from what I’d heard of the films, they didn’t strike me as my cinemagraphic cup of tea. Being a scientist, though, I caved to intellectual inquiry and allowed young Sacagawea lead the way.

When she popped in the DVD, I nearly fell out of my chair.

In one of the opening scenes, Edward —the vampire heartthrob— steps out of his souped-up Volvo and swaggers across the high school parking lot, the wind blowing through his hair, his button-down shirt open just enough to give the girls a peek at his perfect pecs; an inhuman “come and get me” flag unfurled for tween and teen girls the world over.

I knew I was in trouble.

This guy had it all: the cool car, the heroin-chic body, and the tousled hair that looked like he’d just rolled out of bed (but which likely took his hairdressers close to an hour to prepare and a pint of hair product to achieve).

But this isn’t what kicked my anthropology project into high gear. No, that came later, when Edward proclaimed that he wanted to show Bella who he really was. All of us guys have used a variation of this line at one time or another to get a girl to like us. I was intrigued: what would Edward do? Would he sit down and share his dreams? Maybe get out his guitar and sing her a ballad? Oh no, that’s so 1980s. Instead, he has Bella climb onto his back (literally) and he carries her up to the top of the mountain like a spider monkey on steroids so that he can get above the cloud cover and into the sunlight, whereupon he sheds his shirt and….sparkles.

Are you kidding me?

Wasn’t it enough that he was good looking, rich, had a cool car and —did I mention?— was more than 100 years old and full of wisdom? No, he had to sparkle, too.

Right then and there I was thankful that I wasn't in high school any more. I mean how does a guy live up to that? This Edward is the tweenage version of My Little Pony. Or, for you guys, the female version of Pamela Anderson — if Pamela Anderson also brewed her own beer, built her own 16 burner outdoor grill and was a physicist who solved cold fusion.

That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks: this is what women have talked about for decades! The cover models on magazines, the actresses on TV and in movies — they all were perfect: great bodies, fabulous hair, interesting lives, perky personalities. But it’s all just fantasy, a figment of someone’s imagination — one that’s sold back to women as the reality they should achieve. When the wife would point this out to me, I’d nod sagely while my reptilian brain had a few fantasies of its own.

But when I saw Edward sparkle, I realized the jig was up for us guys.

Just as the women in Cosmopolitan are air brushed to enhance their matched convexities, to smooth their necks and increase their waist-to-hip ratios, Edward was enhanced with sparkles.

Perhaps this triggers the same reptilian response in women; maybe there’s a feminine “sparkle detector” that gets activated when a young guy strips his shirt and shines in the sunlight?

I have no idea. What I do know is that a quick Internet search did not locate any Guy Glitter. Maybe that will be the push-up bra-like product for boys of my daughter’s (and son’s!) generation? Maybe someone will make a fortune selling it to hapless boys with visions of whipping off their shirts at the high school dance and glittering under the disco lights to the swooning delight of all the girls.

Or maybe we guys will just start suffering the same way women have since the dawn of media.

I knew I shouldn’t have watched that damn movie.