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I'm in the early stages of my Vampire Diaries rewatch (commentary/meta forthcoming) but I had some thoughts that, while TVD-specific, had to do with vampire romances in general.
Now, I've talked before about one of the fantasies of the Vampire/The Girl pairing, and how I think a part of the attraction (and one of the attractions of Twilight) is the fact that it is not the girl being responsible for controlling the sexuality in the relationship. In real life, there is a lot of cultural/social pressure put on girls regarding sex. They are instructed to control men via their clothing (dress sexy but not to sexy), expected to control whether or not they are having sex, sometimes bear social stigma if they DO have sex, and have the threat of unwanted pregnancy. Basically, sex for teenage girls has a lot more potential to harm than sex for teenage boys does, even if we control for the threat of rape or sexual violence. So part of the vampire romance fantasy is a girl getting to (and I am having a bitch of a time picking the right verb here) give up the metaphoric boundary patrol she's expected to do, without coming to harm from it.
The flip side of that is basically the above dynamic, only with violence instead of sex. In the US, while domestic abuse rates are declining, about 25% of women will be abused at some point in their life, most likely by someone they know and are close to. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if someone is violent, that violence is most likely to be expressed in their intimate relationships. Which means that the fantasy of the guy who is a threat to everyone but his romantic partner –who is preternaturally off limits– is pretty damn tempting.
( Where It Gets TVD Specific )
Now, I've talked before about one of the fantasies of the Vampire/The Girl pairing, and how I think a part of the attraction (and one of the attractions of Twilight) is the fact that it is not the girl being responsible for controlling the sexuality in the relationship. In real life, there is a lot of cultural/social pressure put on girls regarding sex. They are instructed to control men via their clothing (dress sexy but not to sexy), expected to control whether or not they are having sex, sometimes bear social stigma if they DO have sex, and have the threat of unwanted pregnancy. Basically, sex for teenage girls has a lot more potential to harm than sex for teenage boys does, even if we control for the threat of rape or sexual violence. So part of the vampire romance fantasy is a girl getting to (and I am having a bitch of a time picking the right verb here) give up the metaphoric boundary patrol she's expected to do, without coming to harm from it.
The flip side of that is basically the above dynamic, only with violence instead of sex. In the US, while domestic abuse rates are declining, about 25% of women will be abused at some point in their life, most likely by someone they know and are close to. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if someone is violent, that violence is most likely to be expressed in their intimate relationships. Which means that the fantasy of the guy who is a threat to everyone but his romantic partner –who is preternaturally off limits– is pretty damn tempting.
( Where It Gets TVD Specific )
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