So Ridiculous

(WARNING: I am in a mood. It's 3am, I'm at work, and I have a headache. And I'm venting.)

So Deseret Book pulled the Twilight series off its shelves this past week. Oh my word. It was getting mixed reviews and was considered inappropriate. You've got to be kidding me.

Although I must say I'm not that surprised... after all, this is Deseret Book we're talking about. After Eclipse, the third book in the Twilight series, I heard so many comments about how sexual it was and how "teenage girls are going to think it's okay to be kissing boys." As if it's not okay for teenage girls to be kissing teenage boys. Oh wait... I almost forgot... we like to pretend teenagers don't think about the opposite sex or anything they could possibly do together here ;)

Edward and Bella make out before they're married. So what? They are teenagers who DON'T have sex... I would think Deseret Book would want to promote the idea.

First of all, post New Moon, when most of what I'm assuming people consider "inappropriate" is taking place, Bella is 18 years old. 18 year old, non-married Bella didn't do one thing I or most of my friends (all "good Mormon kids") hadn't done by the time we were 15. But again I have to remind myself, instead of acknowledging that teenagers make out (or, gasp, have sex) we like to pretend it doesn't happen here. I don't understand why people talk about kissing as this enormously inappropriate thing. I don't understand why it's considered SO inappropriate (for teenagers) in our society that a book store-even a church owned book store- has to pull it off its shelves because a large portion of the community feels teenagers shouldn't be reading about it. I don't understand why our culture is so afraid of anything sensual, let alone sexual.

Our society is so insistent on promoting the idea to teenagers that sex is "bad" and "dirty" and you are "bad" and "dirty" if you come anywhere near it. It's not just that teenagers shouldn't be sexually active. But they can't watch movies with it, or read books with it, or talk about it, or think about it or... its so ridiculous.

Anyway, Twilight has pretty much become the poster child for waiting until you're married, and I think that is awesome. But it has characters who have some pretty sensual moments- even though all they are doing is kissing- and apparently the idea of adolescents reading about this makes us so uncomfortable a bookstore can't even have it on it's shelves anymore. And that is so, so sad.