Twilight: Why do young ladies like vampires?

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The Twilight series is big among early teen young ladies.

First big, and now, small, screen vampires have been increasingly eroticized over the decades. Vampire movies seem to be competing with bodice rippers.

What is the appeal of vampires for women?

I have theories, but I wanna hear some feedback.

I think it has to do with the hansom male screen actors, the romantic side of fantasy, sweet/gentle beastiality/sex and the general mystique.

Could be some more, those ain't coming up now.

Hm. About the same as Wallourdes says.

They want to be eaten.

Because if you sell s**t to teenage girls, teenage girls will buy s**t. Most of them will, anyway.

I've to agree with Wallourdes, it has to do more romantic fantasy than anything else.
Honestly, I don't see why people are so enthrall with vampires in general.

There is a missing button on that survey...

"Twilight makes me want to projectile vomit - how did the book sell copies to anyone other than - maybe - the "author's" mother and how could anyone bear to make the movie? Also, why wasn't the editor who bought the book forced to spend the rest of his life reading rejects from the slush pile?"

Twilight = eeeeuuuuuwwww (inaudible gagging)

The "Romantic Vampire" craze has been around long before Twilight...

I think it's because in classic stories and mythology vampires are generally described as attractive beings with a dark side. They look very handsome and beautiful which is how they lure victims so they can feed on them. Plus they have the power to turn people into vampires, and the idea of a powerful being falling in love with you and giving you the gift of everlasting life intrigues a lot of people.

That's my answer.

The problem is, if vampires were real, they wouldn't give you the gift of everlasting life - they'd condemn you to everlasting undeath, which is a much different proposition.

If an impossibly beautiful female vampire were to walk up to me, tell me she was in love with me, and offer to make me just like her, I'd play along - long enough to drive a stake through her heart. My reasoning would be simple: if anything remained inside her deserving of my consideration, I'd be doing her a favour. And if not, at least I'd be protecting everyone else - including myself - from such a dreadful fate.

Either way you wouldn't have to worry about aging or dying, unless you tripped and fell on a wooden fence post or happened to eat pasta with lots of garlic.

Some seem to say that it is somthing along the lines of ageless love, and thst the object of affection loves them so much they fight against hunger.

I actually really like vampires, but Twilight fans are largely hypocrits, they mostly like how good looking they are and I enjoy pointing out their own hypocrisy. Firstly that he is 100 years old and a stalker, a good thing to bring up is the movie is Bram Stokers Dracula, sure he looks good later on, but at the begining he is quite scary looking.

They probably mostly like the romance still because that they look like the same age, I bet most would have something to say about Dance in the Vampire Bund which actually pushes the socialy acceptable image, firstly one where the age old Vampire looks like a little girl, and forget "I am a monster from drinking blood", she has to kidnap children and rip peoople apart. The second one actually is where the kid is actually a kid and again very socially unacceptable, which doubtlessly would gross them out.

Might aswell also add being eternally young.

I'm just wondering how vampires stopped being horror related and started being an emo fashion show/soap opera.

I don't understand what everyone has againt the whole "emo" trend. I'm not emo myself, even though I do like dark things like horror and macabre humor. However I respect it enough to know it's just a trend just like being a hippy was in the 60's, and everyone used to hate those guys too. People need to lighten up and stop labeling everything as "emo" just to put a bad mark on things they consider socially unacceptable.

The original folktales of vampires told by the peasants of transylvania portrayed vampires as ugly and smelling putrid like corpses. Hardly attractive. Or at leat thats what Ive heard.

Even early silent films, like Nosforatu, made the vampires rather grotesque.

But starting with Bela Lagosi Vampires started to be sexy ( in a pallid pathological kinda way) and have been that way since.

Not really an expert in the history of the vampire concept. It maybe that Bram Stoker's nineteen centurey novel started the sexy vampire thing.

But there is something to what your saying about being lured by a sexy alluring person to.. is it eternal life..or a form of death... either way.. its makes a compelling theme.

The only male equivalent to this vampire-as-sex-symbol luring you to destruction thing I can think of are the Sirens in the ancient Greek epic of Ulysses. The hot babes who sang so sweetly that they lured sailors to destruction on the rocks.
I think vampire-philia may have something to do with uncousious sexual symbolism. A vampire penetrates you - and draws blood...so to be a victim of a vampire is like being a girl losing her virginity- hense the main demographic who watches Twilight- girls in their early to mid teens.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 01 Jan 2011, 10:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

The female fascination with vampires is not a part of an emo trend. It's a very old thing, no doubt tying in to the sometime gruesome fascination with gore that people can experience... combined with sex, after all, the ones in the movies just look like they're noshing on her neck, you don't generally hear the gory and juicy sounds that would no doubt accompany this horrific act, at least in the few vampire movies I've seen, and also the act can be seen as a fairly obvious penetration metaphor... I've had my moments of fascination with vampires, but they're just too gruesome to really hold an interest. Also, as Stan said in Tales of Monkey Island, women love the reformed bad guy (a lot of women, anyway, I'm just quoting Stan).

That said, I have no use for the blatant string-pulling of the Twilight series which, I might add, appears to take itself awfully seriously for something so silly. Add to that the baffling truth that both the supposed "hotties" in the films are as ugly as shaved orangutans and the girl is wooden in her acting ability and has ENORMOUS nostrils... and, well... Yeah, I don't really get it. Tom Cruise as a vampire was a beautiful thing, and yet still so repulsive... after all, what is Tom Cruise in real life but a vulgar, mad parasite in a handsome package? (Marvelous actor, don't get me wrong, just... mental)