Uprising- The attraction Twilight to older women

Hello Everyone! I am departing from my usual blogs momentarily to post a draft of my article for Triond, AC, and the AP for all my friends to read since a lot of people contributed to this story. I still have a few quotes from sources that I have to gather together and flesh out in to the article, so this is incomplete, but it gives you an idea of the kind of stuff I work on all day! :)

Twilight has become a phenomena within a phenomena. When the movie version of New Moon was released in November, it raked in a record setting $140.7 million. People have already began counting down to the Eclipse premiere. Even Burger King has gotten in on the action with Team Edward and Team Jacob water bottles. At any given event where any of the stars of The Twilight Saga will be seen, you will see hundreds to thousands of screaming, crying fans holding signs that say things like, “Imprint on me!” and “TwiHard”. The amazing thing about this is that a great number of these fans are married women over the age of thirty who have children.
The first time I laid my hands on a copy of Twilight was when I read it with my “church mama”, my 67-year-old friend, who is the grandmother of several granddaughters. One of these granddaughters recommended it to her mother, who in turn recommended it to her mother, my “church mama”. She had just started Breaking Dawn during my stay with her and couldn’t seem to put it down. She would bookmark her page, go put the chicken in the oven, come back and read, bookmark her page, make the bed, come read again. I watched her do this as diligently as I watched Bill O’Reilly berate then President-elect Obama.
Why is the “TwiCrack” so addictive? “It’s the suspicion,” says Jennifer Carson, a 28 year old mother from Anderson, Indiana. “Its about adventure, and love, and makes you beg for more! Go Edward!”
Twilight certainly has the element of love involved, from the epic love triangle of Edward, Bella, and Jacob, to references to classic literature’s greatest loves stories like Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights. Author Stephenie Meyer majored in English at Brigham Young University and is a happily married mother of three sons. Conceived of a dream she had one night, Twilight has captured the hearts and imaginations of millions and garnered several prestigious awards, including Publisher’s Weekly’s “Best Book of 2005”. Stephenie told Time magazine readers in a 2008 interview, “I didn't write these books specifically for the young-adult audience. I wrote them for me. I don't know why they span the ages so well, but I find it comforting that a lot of thirtysomethings with kids, like myself, respond to them as well--so I know that it's not just that I'm a 15-year-old on the inside!”
Maybe that’s what really appeals to women of a certain age who go bizarro for bloodsuckers and wacky for wolves. In this day and age, youth is everything. There were over 10 million surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures performed in the United States in 2008, as reported by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS). Surgical procedures accounted for 17% of the total with nonsurgical procedures making up 83% of the total. Recently Heidi Montag nee Pratt of The Hills pseudo-fame revealed that she, at 23, had ten different procedures in one day to help with her career as a pop star. When I posed the question of why so many older women were attracted to the Twilight series on my Facebook page, one of my friends asked, “Who would admit to being an ‘older woman‘? Lol!”
While I know my friend was joking with me, there is much truth in jest. Part of the appeal in Twilight lies in the allure of eternal youth. Edward will never grow older than seventeen, Jacob stops aging until he no longer transforms into a wolf, and Bella is obsessed with her age. In chapter five of Eclipse, Bella says to Jacob, “Am I the only one who has to get old? I get older every stinking day! Damn it! What kind of world is this? Where’s the justice?”
There is also the cougar mentality that exists in our culture today thanks to the likes of Demi Moore, Sex and the City, and reality television. There are even terms like puma for late twentysomethings/ thirtysomethings who date younger men, artic fox (women who are post-menopausal), and manther, which is the male version of a cougar. What these Twilight fans are really experiencing is actually termed “pedophilia”, which is the attraction of older individuals to teenagers. Granted Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen in the big screen adaptations of the Twilight Saga, is a healthy 23 years old, but his character is forever seventeen.
Many of my friends argued that it is the romance of the books that draws them in. In fact every single person who posted to my Facebook page said that the aspect of true love conquering all was the main element that drew them to the series. “I love true and honest love. It took Edward years but he finally found it and then there is the unconditional love and Bella knowing the danger but like most people that find real, true love, you will do anything to hold on to it even if you die in the process,” states Rhiannon Chandler, 29 of Ephesus, Georgia. According to University Wire at Louisiana State University, 88 percent of American men and women between the ages of 20 and 29 believe that they have a soul mate who is waiting for them. According to The State of Our Unions 2005, a report issued by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, only 63% of American children grow up with both biological parents -- the lowest figure in the Western world. So of course people crave the idea that true love and pure romance and a relationship that will endure eternally can exist. Says Heather Duffey, 29, of Carrollton, Georgia, “Sometimes you just can't choose who you love and it is refreshing to see true/pure love conquer all.”
Maybe no one can ever really pinpoint the allure of the Twilight Saga. I think my friend Jessica Alford says it best when she says, “Because...it is an escape from reality at times”. And everybody, no matter what your age, needs that escape some times!