Sparkle for Twilight Blog Update: with pictures and videos here!

OMG. I'm so flippin excited! Call me a fourteen-year-old at heart, but Bestie just let me know that she got us in to see Taylor Swift at the VMAs! O.M.G.

Top 5 Reasons I adore Taylor:

1. She's a girl's girl
2. She believes in fairy princess happily-ever-afters
3. She has gorgeous curly hair that makes me want to say, "get outta here!"
4. Her songs speak to my inner teenager-for-life
5. She dresses herself in whimsical, fanciful gowns in her music videos--just because

Seriously, watch any of her videos and tell me it doesn't speak to your fourteen-year-old heart--that you don't wish you were back in high school again, only if high school was without all the calculus tests, your skin was flawless, and there was a cute guy who fell head over heels for you over the loud popular girl while you were the down-to-earth girl who stayed in on Friday nights... alright I'm getting carried away again.

Actually there are girls that don't get Taylor Swift's appeal. BFF is one of them. Whenever she hears her song in her car, she yells at the radio, "Yeah really Taylor Swift?! I don't believe you were the girl in t-shirts!" (She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts. She's cheer captain and I'm in the bleachers...) BFF's rage makes me laugh out loud.

Bestie and I totally get Taylor though, so I am damn freaking ecstatic we are going to see her in like two weeks! I wonder what the chances are if any of the Twilight cast will be at the VMAs?! Probably not, but OMG, if Rob and Kristen?! I'd die. DIE.

Sorry, all of the above there was breaking news and when I get into teenager mode, the OMGs come flying left and right.


So yesterday, I was out with with Mom and her friend and her friend's daughter who is the same age as me. Her friend's daughter brought along her boyfriend to--AFTERNOON TEA. Yes, we were meeting for afternoon tea, a total and complete girls' afternoon.

Why anyone would bring their boyfriend to such a thing is beyond me, and on the other side of it, why would any boyfriend agree to spend an afternoon sipping fruit tea from Wedgwood china with two 50-something ladies and their 20-something daughters?

Whatever, in the end, the guy was nice and it was fine. But two things came up during our tea session--potential dealbreakers, as Bestie and I call them, if you will:

1. Girlfriends who allow (or worse, expect!) their boyfriends to carry their purse.

2. Boyfriends who read Twilight.

Okay, okay, the first one is definitely a dealbreaker for me. I would never ever ask my boyfriend to carry my purse, let alone ALLOW him to carry my purse in public. Do you know how idiotic it looks to have a man toting around your black patent Balenciaga?! I'm all for chivalry, but I would never willingly effeminize my man. I'm bad. I secretly took pictures on my camera phone so I could show Bestie because it just looked too funny.

What killed me even more was that Mom did not even know it wasn't his bag. She noticed the zipper was open and wanted to warn him that "his" wallet was going to come out, and that's when I corrected her and told her it wasn't his bag. I slapped her in the arm giggling away at her mistake and she hushed and said to me, "My God, no wonder! I was like what's going on? That's not a backpack." I looked at her like how could she have mistaken a woman's handbag for that man's. She says, "I don't know, I thought maybe it was a European thing!" My mother, bless her. She is sometimes so naive and so clueless, but she entertains the hell out of me.

Now the second point, I'm on the fence about. I know there are guys that read Twilight, either by choice or by their wives'/girlfriends' pestering. However I doubt I'd ever ask my boyfriend to read Twilight, for the same reason why I would never tell my DAD to read Twilight--I don't want him to know what goes on in my head 24/7!

While I think it's great that a guy be sensitive enough to appreciate the love story, I don't know if I want him to be that...sentimental? It kind of brings me back to my freshman year of college and an exchange I had with a guy I met during orientation. I said in passing that I loved The Notebook. He said it was one of his favorite movies too. Hang on...What?


I busted his chops over that, "Really?" said skeptically. You know it could have been one of those moments when guys say things they think they want girls to hear. However, I don't know if I would have wanted to hear that his all-time favorite movie was The Notebook, too.

And while I'm at the topic, holy goodness, if you haven't seen Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling accept their MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss, you are missing out. That's how it should have been done!

I think it boils down to the fact I can't understand from a guy's perspective, why they would like Twilight as much as women. As a female, reading Twilight I can relate to Bella as an average girl who has self-doubt but also still has confidence. And of course, I want to be Bella so I can meet a guy who sweeps me off my feet and rescues me when I don't even know I need rescuing--I know a lot of girls don't like the fact Bella seems helpless but I don't think she is. So the guy happens to be a sexy vampire.

Sexy vampire qualifications: strong, fast, weathly (it doesn't hurt), smart, can read people (literally), perpetually smells divine...

How does it go for male readers?

I relate to Bella, but I can't see most guys being able to relate to Edward, unless they are also broody and quiet. Maybe they might want to be Edward, but out loud that would sound insane. "I wish I could have super human strength and never need to eat or sleep..." Perhaps that's why many guys who actually do read Twilight are Team Jacob, because they can relate to Jacob seeing how he's human. Then they can also put Jacob as the "good guy" and complain about how us ladies never choose the good guy.

I want to meet Edward, but I also can't see the typical guy wanting to meet Bella. There are "Bellas" everywhere and guys don't lust after girls like that in the real world. At least not right away, not obviously. It's far more possible for guys to meet their Bella than us to find our Edward.

What's the greater appeal? I'm not making fun of the fact, not yet anyway, I am actually curious. Maybe they go for the "action" in the books. Yeah, all those intense high-stakes battle sequences, that's what Twilight's all about. You don't pick it up to read about that. It's a love story first; vampires and werewolves, are all secondary.

The last thing I leave you with is a suggestion. No more like a demand. If you haven't seen Adventureland yet, what the heck are you waiting for?! Rent it, buy it, watch it on Youtube--just go see it! I could get into it at length but the ladies at Robsten Lovers pretty much summed it up for me: 10 Things I Love About Adventureland