Here’s the story: girl and boy meet. They realize they want each other. Conflict ensues. They realize they need each other. Highly emotional reconciliation. Happily ever after.
I used to think I was above the Twilight fuss, but when the first one made it to Redbox, I figured it would be okay for me to see what the madness was all about without seeming like an obsessed pre-teen. I was surprised by what I found.
The movie was awful. That wasn’t a surprise. Looking at the work independent of the books on which it is based, I found the characters lacking personality and emotional depth. The relationship between Bella and Edward was awkward – not at all the kind of romance real people should fantasize about for themselves. But in some way, it didn’t matter. It struck me that even though the relationship was decidedly ridiculous and shallow, I still wanted what Bella had.
It gets us every time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a scholarly Northwestern girl or the 14-year-old that wants to marry Justin Bieber. We’re all suckers for a good love story. In fact, sometimes we’re even suckers for bad love stories.
I wondered what the reason could be for buying into a story like Twilight, but then even as a little kid, a Disney princess cartoon could have me dreaming about the day I would meet Prince Charming.
Most of us have likely developed the notion that finding a prince (or a soul mate or what have you) is the one thing we need to have everything. I mean this in two ways.
The first is that, in a practical sense, romantic aspirations are the least achievable. You can study hard for a grade or a degree. You can build up a resume to get a good job. You can make yourself work out and eat right to be in shape. But what can you do to ensure that you meet that one person? Finding that guy will allow us to have everything because we can take care of the rest on our own.
The second is that romantic movies cause us to have unrealistic expectations. If you look at most of our childhood love stories, the prince primarily functions as a rescuer. What we want is for someone to save us, to go to great lengths to have us; or someone to know what is wrong without asking questions and to be the thing that makes us happy regardless of the circumstances.
This is asking a lot. There are days when even lifelong friends have trouble understanding us. We can’t ask a guy to be God, and we shouldn’t hold out for one that is.
Girls at Northwestern often complain about the lack of dateable guys around, but I think we should be as pragmatic in our romantic aspirations as we are with other aspirations. The men in classic love-stories aren’t real, so we shouldn’t expect guys to be like them any more than guys should expect us to have Cinderella-sized waists.
Emily Alvarado is a Medill sophomore. She can be reached at [email protected].
