"Twilight" has made the world a worse place.
I believe this not only because the vampire frenzy has somehow made Kristen Stewart an in-demand actress or because T-shirts that say "Bite Me" are suddenly best-sellers.
Mostly, it's because I have yet to find any value these books offer to the teen girls who make up most of the fan base.
The "heroine" of the books, Bella Swan, is a lonely teenage girl who has no personality and is left so devastated by her short-lived breakup that she can't get out of bed for weeks. She is incapable of avoiding danger or taking care of herself without help from the men in her life. Plus, she has a stupid name.
Edward Cullen, Bella's vampire boyfriend, for those who have been living in a hole the past few years, watches Bella's every move so she doesn't get eaten. And by that, I mean he sneaks into her house and watches her sleep.
Edward doesn't feed off humans, so he protects Bella from other vampires. When she goes on a road trip with her friends, he follows her so that she won't get attacked. He also occasionally manipulates her into doing things for her own good without explaining things; he just tells her to trust him.
Best of all, Bella's main ambition at 17 is to convince Edward to make her a vampire, so she can be with him forever.
On the one hand, I understand that a world where your vampire boyfriend can sense danger and help you avoid it probably works differently than the world in which we live.
Yet I talk to so many young women who tell me that they are waiting for their own personal Edward Cullen, or that they see themselves as Bella, and I don't really understand.
My younger sister introduced me to some of them. She made me read the books, and she was 17 at the height of the "Twilight" craze. Her friends would shriek when they saw a silver Volvo, aka Edward's car, drive by on the road.
The summer the fourth book came out, a bunch of her friends were at our house. I heard the name "Edward" in between giggles.
I looked at all of these 17-year-olds who were in love with a fictional character and sighed.
"Can I just tell you something?" I said. "If you ever meet a guy who acts anything like Edward Cullen, he's hiding something worse than being a vampire."
They stared at me like I was the crazy one.
It's the revealing fantasy of the ordinary girl: Danger doesn't matter. Being noticed by someone mysterious, someone unattainable, someone they can be with forever - that's what young women want. It's slightly appalling to me that the "Twilight" machine is so willing to tap into that.
Granted, entertainment doesn't always have to have a moral. But let's stop treating "Twilight" like it's the next "Harry Potter" or, even worse, "Wuthering Heights."
"Twilight" isn't literature. It's a gimmick with a passable, exotic plot.
Literature is supposed to tell us something about ourselves, to make us understand our own humanity or the world around us. What does "Twilight" say? That teenage girls can't protect themselves from the dangerous world around them?
I guess I'm OK with treating "Twilight" as a quick read or seeing the movie for fun. But I will argue with anyone who tries to find redeeming literary value in what is essentially the "Sweet Valley High" of vampire lore.
And ladies, seriously, you can do better than the undead.
Hilary Lehman is a journalism senior. Her column appears on Wednesday.
