Vampires and Girls

The current vampire craze seems to be a girl thing.

Ann Rice has male readers?

Check out the cover of this novel. It's a classic romance novel cover: young woman running away from a creepy mansion (the Jungian archetype for an evil, all-consuming mother figure). Even though it's a tongue-in-cheek re-telling of the original Bram Stoker classic, this time from Dracula's point of view, the book is aimed at a female audience.

Both the Bram Stoker-style vampire of old horror movies and the fresh look at Dracula linked above are different from the current crop of popular "sensitive vampires".

Something to think about: Will the massive popularity of "the sensitive vampire" among girls, contrasted with the massive popularity of hard-core porn among boys, increase our collective confusion about the time-honored cultural traditions set up to help young men and young women bridge the difficult differences between the sexes in a civilized and lasting manner? Will widening differences in expectations about the nature of the opposite sex lessen the stability of future families?

Just as America's young men are being given deeply erroneous ideas about sex by what they watch on the Web, so, too, are America's young women receiving troubling misinformation about the male of the species from Twilight. These women are going to be shocked when the sensitive, emotionally available, poetry-writing boys of their dreams expect a bit more from a sleepover than dew-eyed gazes and chaste hugs. The young man, having been schooled in love online, will be expecting extreme bondage and a lesbian three-way.

The bigger problem here is that we're breeding sexually incompatible human beings, and vampires are to blame.

Or, did the porn come first? Is the massive popularity of 'the sensitive vampire' the natural emotional reaction of young teen girls to the pervasiveness of pornography which idealizes casual, impersonal, and sometimes competitive sex? Might it be a reaction to music videos which suggest that sex is the beginning point of a relationship? Could "sensitive vampire" fantasies be an escape from the openly expressed, crass expectations of today's young teen boys, whose ideas about the emotional nature of girls were shaped by porn sites and other pervasive sexual imagery in the media?

"Sensitive Vampire" stories may be a way for young girls to start exploring the potentially dangerous nature of male/female relationships in a less-threatening manner than dealing with the actual boys in the neighborhood.

From substitute teaching in middle school and from talking with girls, I have developed the impression that young teen girls already already have a fairly good sense (at least on a superficial level) of the porn-influenced sexual expectations, or at least the fantasies, of the typical young teen boy. Though girls may sometimes remain fairly clueless about how to deal with these cultural expectations, and also about how to influence the feelings and behavior of boys through their mannerisms, banter, expectations, mode of dress, etc.

I remember how easy it was (in high school, for me) to feel attracted to the "bad boys" in class. But that was a time when even the bad boys, at least the ones who seemed intriguing, had some sense of restraint when in mixed company. I wonder how the typical 14-year-old girl these days reacts to the crass talk and behavior of many real boys, especially the traditionally-attractive "bad boys" they encounter at school? There may be some good reasons why the dangerous, but sensitive, vampires of today's popular culture -- restrained by the realization that the needs and desires of their love interests are different from their own in fundamental ways -- may seem more attractive to middle-school girls than the real-life dangerous boys.

Do you think boys understand with any depth why "sensitive vampires" are attractive to young girls? The assumption that dangerous boys have a tender heart somewhere down deep -- a heart that only needs a little love in order to change a dangerous boy into a devoted partner -- is very common among girls. Dangerous boys are terrible risks for young women in real life, even if they really do have a tender heart somewhere down deep. Even sensitive vampires in books are pretty risky as love interests. Best left to fantasy relationships. The desire for "conquerable danger" in interpersonal relationships tends to fade for most girls over time. One argument against early dating.