Hayes-Smith's 'Gender Norms In The Twilight Series'

Over the past few years, gender norms have been in the spotlight. In general, society has started to notice that placing strict restraints on a person’s gender can lead to negative and unwanted effects. The older generation – or those who have a very limited perspective- expect the gender roles that they conformed to, be placed on the younger generation. The younger generation – or those who have a broader perspective – are challenging these ideas. The concept of gender roles can be explained by the examples of men are strong, tough and macho and women are weak, timid and emotional. Rebecca Hayes-Smith reports on how these gender roles are placed on a society by media in “Gender Norms in the Twilight Series”. In “Gender Norms in the Twilight series” Hayes-Smith provides the reader with evidence supporting the gender norms that Stephanie Meyers – the author of the Twilight saga- exploits. Hayes- Smith center’s her argument on the way Meyers portrays the main characters, Bella, Jacob and Edward. Hayes-Smith points out that Bella is presented as a weak women who needs protection from the bad guys while Edward and Jacob are presented as overwhelming masculine characters who can fight for their girl. Hayes-Smith also points to concept of sex that occurs in the final book in the series Breaking Dawn. She explains how the sex scene

Reading the book as a sixth grader, I remember questioning it myself and thinking “why does she continue to have sex with him even though it hurts?” I also just went along with it because I thought that she loved him and that made it okay. The fact that Hayes-Smith grabs this example out of 2,560 pages drives home the point to me. I also found the comparison of classes to the character amusing. I never equated them to different social classes until reading the article. Overall, “Gender Norms in the Twilight Series” puts the saga in a new light that I find very