Normally I write about music, however this article is not about music, and let me explain why. You see, over the last few months I have found many of my music fans over at MySpace (Shameless Plug) all have  one thing in common – Edward Cullen. In fact, they are all Team Edward, not Team Jacob. Now if you don’t know what I’m talking about (i.e. you pay NO attention to popular culture), I’m talking about the “Twilight Phenomenon.”

What Women Want: A Twilight Obsession

Twilight: it’s not just a series of movies, there are actually books (four to be exact) by first-time author Stephenie Meyer; and she has girls ages 14 to 64 lusting after character, Edward Cullen, as the perfect man – and her portrayal of the characters, albeit vampires, are closer to some women’s perceptions of relationship reality than we may have thought.

Initially I didn’t think too much of this alleged “phenomenon,” and I most certainly was not going to read the books; at most, I would watch the movies. However, after a female colleague of mine decided to read the series and gave me her open opinion, my interests were peaked.

She said, “Twilight is ‘Girl-Porn.’”

Not only that, she continued to state if she had a teenage daughter she would not let her read those books. I found her critique quite surprising, coming from an attractive, open-minded (I thought) 20-something female living in London.

When I finally watched the film of the second Twilight book, New Moon, on its day of release here in England, I was amazed to see the cinema “rammed” (as they say here in the U.K.) with girls from 14 to 64. But the best part of the movie wasn’t the film itself,  it was more interesting listening to the reactions of these females, more so than actually watching the film version of this “Girl-Porn.”

So I, after watching the movie, posed the idea of “Girl-Porn” to my Generation-Y fans and friends in social media to get their feedback on this idea, and the only response I received was a vigorous denial of indulging in this “Girl-Porn,” with the same regard most would never admit to watching good ole regular porn. They collective stated that, Twilight was actually pretty “tame,” and [spoiler alert for those living under a rock] the characters only have sex after they get married.

Now, my friend’s rationale for deeming Twilight “Girl-Porn,” is due to the fact that it portrays the relationships as overly fantasized and all-consuming.

To better understand this incongruous diatribe of my friend’s opinion against the masses of “Team Edward” women,  I took the plunge and bought all four books (I got a two-for-one special.) and viewed both Twilight films, to provide you with this subjective analysis of what women fancy, based on the success of this series.

So here it goes, on a purely…”factual” level; based on reading the Twilight series…

Women  Want a Guy Who Is:

1. Older than their grandfather
2. Impossibly fast and impossibly strong
3. Super rich
4. A model
5. Not a trendsetter, not a trend – he transcends the trend (i.e. “Blue Steel” Zoolander )
6. Lastly, totally obsessed with you (in a good way of course), and only hurts you, because he is trying to protect you, from himself (such a great guy)

Though it may seem satirical, this work of fiction is closer to real life than we think, clearly mirroring the irrational human behaviour more accurately than I’d originally thought. The series provides a little bit of old-school vicarious reality, in which it is written in first-person, thus readers are able to experience the most popular guy in school to be totally and obsessively “into them.”

This is the ultimate female fantasy, “Girl-Porn” as my female friend says, and it takes FOUR books for the heroine to come into her own.

I am no relationship expert, and don’t pretend to be one, but I actually think Twilight is good, in that it shows real life irrationality and desires that we’ve come to accept as the norm in relationships, just made way more dramatic to kind of highlight the real life themes to us.

It is pretty interesting when you think this girl is basically dating her grandfather with a facelift, but hey – she’s over 18 and can decided for herself what she wants, just like all the women out there whom can decide for themselves if Twilight is just like real life – messed up!