Girls Are So Weird, Right?

Having just recently been to see New Moon, and having chided myself for shallowness over it, I was interested in this piece from The American Prospect (you must also admire the punny title, Girls Just Wanna Have Fangs).

The article talks about the way that our culture sort of broadly derides the Twilight books/movies/overall phenomenon, perhaps not so much because they're poorly written/problematic in their presentation of relationships (which is not disputed) as because girls like them.

And anything meant for girls, and that girls like a lot but guys don't get, is bound to be pretty silly, isn't it?

This is an interesting (though not novel) point.

After all, it's not as if a lot of the stuff intended for guy consumption is high art. Nor, to be fair, is it as if it's presented that way--there was plenty of well-deserved projectile vomiting over the second Transformers movie too--but somehow it's not universally considered to be just plain frivolous the way Twilight is, although giant robots shambling through a half-assed plot that I suspect was pieced together from bits of 15 randomly selected other bad movies is in fact pretty frivolous.

I guess it all comes back to the way that we do tend to imagine the 'default person' as a male person. Ridiculously over-the-top movies aimed at guys are just ridiculously over-the-top movies. And I enjoy some of these as much as the next person. They're fun to watch, applaud dramatic explosions in, snicker at, and talk about later.

Ridiculously over-the-top movies aimed at girls are chick flicks. And I enjoy some of these as much as the next person too, but there sure aren't as many 'next persons' to enjoy them with. Because the 'default person' doesn't care about them. Only girls.

It almost makes me want to root for New Moon to become the biggest movie of the year, the one everybody has to see or be hopelessly out of the loop, just for some balance (darn it, I want to be able to dissect every hilarious slow motion sparkle with everyone I know!), but...enh. Maybe not quite.

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