Why would anyone be Team Bella?

Okay, so I know I'm a bit of a Twi-Hard... I've read and love the books, impulsively bought "The Brief Second Life of Bree Tanner" and loved that, too, I own both Twilight and New Moon on DVD, and CANNOT wait for Eclipse to come out (nine more days!)

And, as they did with New Moon, Burger King is again the fat-food (oops, fast food) sponsor, and again they have aluminum water bottles. Last fall they had Team Edward and Team Jacob, this summer they have added Team Bella.

Who the hell would be Team Bella? Bella is the most despicable characters in the book. I'm pretty sure I like almost every character better than Bella. She's manipulative to all the men in her life, not only Jacob and Edward (who you know she will choo-choo-choose above anyone else in her life) but her father and Billy Black and even Mike Newton and Seth Clearwater. And while the story is told from Bella's direct perspective, I'm pretty sure she gets off on having all these men do her bidding.

Ugh, Bella sucks. No one should be Team Bella. She has no personality and no one would ever actually fall in love with her. They might take her home for the night, but they wouldn't want her forever, as both Edward and Jacob want.

And please, the girl is in high school and obsessed with aging and obsessed with forever! Give it a break, think about tomorrow and nothing else, like a normal teenager. Bella is so not relatable.

Go Team Anyone But Bella!

Bella Swan can be a good role model

She's pale! We've been a tan-obsessed country for almost 50 years, and while it's started to wane, characters like Bella Swan help us embrace the pale.

I love tanning. I love being dark with my hair all bleached out from the sun, or the tanning bed. In fact, I have tanned every spring since I was 16, at first in preparation for prom (you just couldn't go to prom pale in my hometown) and then just for summer. But this spring, I'm not going to. I'm going to embrace my pale.

Having pale role models like Bella and all the other stars of the Twilight Saga makes it so much easier for this new trend to take off.

So please, everyone, embrace the pale!

ps: the new healthcare reform will include a 10% sales tax on indoor tanning. I'm not sure this will include spray tans or not...

Is Bella Swan good for young girls?

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After reading the Twilight books (twice) and re-watching Twilight and New Moon last night I can't help but wonder what type of girls look up to Bella Swan, the series' main character and narrator. She's obsessive and codependent upon Edward AND Jacob, after Edward leaves. She has no real personality traits (clumsy isn't a personality trait) and she isn't even that pretty (per the books, not Kristen Stewart) and yet she has two guys (plus Mike Newton) fall head over heals for her. Will girls get the message that they don't need try to fall in love? (I believe that cute and charming are a must to attract any decent guy.)

And then, after careful consideration ***Spoiler Alert*** she does agree to marry Edward, when she's 18. I'm not saying that you can't find "the one" in high school, but more often than not to marriages end in divorce, or become loveless marriages. I'm worried that a whole generation of young readers will think they have to get married right out of high school. I think that love is often left out of life lessons for young girls. You can fall in love with more than one person in your life. Maybe parents don't want to bring this up because they don't want to think of their little girls having sex with more than one partner (or any partner, for that matter, they want grandchildren via immaculate conception), or maybe they feel that love by example is enough, but it's not. Every love is different.

**Spoiler Alert*** And then, to top it all off, Bella becomes a teen mom. Not a single or unmarried mom, but a teen mom just the same. Does no one see the danger in this? It's one thing to get married and have a honey-moon baby when you're in your late 20s or early 30s, but in your teens it could possibly present all sorts of problems later in life.

I think this is where the author's world and Bella's world get mixed up. Stephanie Meyer grew up Mormon, which is a faith dominated by large families, and in that culture it's not uncommon for couples to marry young and start families early. Meyer herself was married and pregnant before she finished college, and has often said she loves being a mom, and looked forward to that as a career. Which was her choice, and she finished college before she completely settled down.

Bella, on the other hand, grew up with parents separated by divorce because they rushed into marriage at an early age. Which is a major struggle and why Bella doesn't want to marry Edward. But she gives in and the topic of safe sex is never mentioned. Granted, who would think you could get knocked up by a vampire anyway, but still, condoms or the pill or something should have been mentioned, at least as an after thought, at some point in Breaking Dawn.

I guess my biggest fear is that girls who read Twilight and love Bella will think they don't need to develop into an independent person.

I think older readers, such as myself, strongly dislike or hate Bella. I don't like her because she gets everything she ever wants and more. And no one good dies. In Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books, everyone close to Sookie dies. She has to deal with loss in a real way, and it's related to her relationship with a vampire, to pull the similarities.

Bella Swan: fun to read about, bad to be like.