Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga has maintained a tight grip on the contemporary cultural imagination. This timely and critical work examines how the Twilight series offers addictively appealing messages about love, romance, sex, beauty and body image, and how these charged themes interact with cultural issues regarding race, class, gender and sexuality. Through a careful analysis of the texts, the fandom and the current socio-historical climate, this work argues that the success of the Twilight series stems chiefly from Meyer’s negotiation of cultural mores.

Natalie Wilson is a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Cal State San Marcos in San Diego, California. She writes and teaches in the areas of popular culture, film, television, horror, women’s literature, and feminism.

Natalie Wilson
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 242
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6042-7
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8561-1
Imprint: McFarland

Preface and Acknowledgments      1

Introduction: A Post-Twilight World      5

1. The Allure of the Vampire, the Danger of the Wolf: Or, Why to Avoid Big, Bad Shape-shifters in Favor of Knights in Sparkling Armor      15

2. Bitten by Romance: Happy Twilight-Ever-After      41

3. Vamping Femininity: Twilight as (Anti?) Feminist Fairy Tale, Or, We Can’t All Be Slayers      61

4. The Dawning of New Men: Hegemonic Masculinity, Sparkly White Male Vampires, and Ab-tastic Wolves of Color      83

5. Sexuality Eclipsed: The Taming of Female Sexuality via Vampire Abstinence      106

6. The Soul of the Vampire: Sparkly Mormons, Female Eves, and Unconverted Wolves      133

7. Got Vampire Privilege? Or, Why You Should Marry an Undead White, Wealthy, Heterosexual Mormon      157

8. Consuming Desires: Can You Buy That Twilight Feeling?      180

Conclusion: You Have a Choice, and It Need Not Be Edward or Jacob      205

Chapter Notes      209

Bibliography      219

Index      229