Gender Stereotypes In Stephenie Meyer's Twilight

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Adolescent girls notice how things are gendered and how women are treated differently than men. These gendered differences between women and men can influence young girls’ minds and make them think that men are more superior to women. Twilight, a book saga written by Stephenie Meyer, can directly influence the thoughts of young girls and how they feel about their own sex. Widely known and loved by many, this series has some underlining meanings whether the author intended them or not. Foss explains this when she says, “Humans often choose to interpret something rhetorically that the sender of the message did not attend to be symbolic. In this case, someone chooses to give an action or an object symbolic value, even though the sender does not …show more content…
Bella meets Edward Cullen and becomes dazzled by his charm and otherworldliness. One day, before school started Bella was standing next to her truck in the school parking lot. In one moment Edward was across the parking lot standing next to his own vehicle and the next, he was between her and a van that sped out of control and almost impaled her. He stopped the van with his bare hands, and walked away like nothing had happened. After being seen in the hospital, Bella asks to have a word with Edward, at which time she confronts him about stopping the van. He replies saying, “you think I lifted a van off you? Nobody will believe that, you know” (Twilight 3). Edward suspects that she knows that he is “different,” so his tone becomes a little aggressive when he explains to her that no one will believe that he was able to stop the van from impaling her. Thus, treating her disrespectfully and trying to sway her thoughts and make her think that she didn’t see him do so. Sellnow explains that, “Feminist perspectives are useful because they call attention to the ways in which arguments that reinforce or challenge hegemonic masculinity are embedded in popular texts” (Feminist Perspectives 151). Meaning that Edward has placed himself above Bella in rank and feels that he is superior towards her. Though, Edward was rude to her and spoke with aggression in his tone, Bella just stood there and did nothing about it. Sellnow explains the idea of girls developing this passiveness when they are subjected to it whether at home or in the media when he says that, “visuals communicate and persuade based on what we tend to notice and not notice in them and then how we interpret or assign meaning to what we see” (Visual Perspectives 203).” She was very passive with the way that he spoke to her and even though she wasn’t going to stop figuring out what he was and how he was able to

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