Preferring gender roles? On women’s romantic preferences in relation to the cultural phenomenon of Twilight

Abstract: The Twilight saga is one of the absolute biggest cross-cultural phenomena we have seen so far in the 21st century. The dramatic love story of the beautiful vampire and the ordinary teenage girl, written by Mormon housewife Stephenie Meyer, has made billions of dollars and engaged a huge predominately young, female audience from the world. The Twilight phenomenon has also received a wide range of criticism, from misogynistic ridicule to legitimate commentary on the conservative and gendered elements of the narrative. This thesis aims to examine why so many female fans idealize and prefer a relationship based on strong and dominate expressions of masculinity and a marginalized and self-sacrificing femininity. Tools used are combinations of concepts of adaptive preferences and symbolic violence, entailing the historical and social construct of inequity, making women embrace sex differences as natural. I highlight the potential emancipatory feature of Twilight that is the female libido, but maintain that the object of love and lust of Twilight fans remains the hypermasculine male.