Twenty years ago, the world was introduced to a ‘twilight’ world of a sparkling vampire and the clumsy girl who loved him. What followed was not just a publishing phenomenon, but a cultural schism. While millions of teenage girls saw a swoon-worthy romance, critics and comedians saw a target, deriding the series as melodramatic, poorly written, and embarrassing.

Twilight, Stephenie Meyer’s romantic saga of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, became one of the most successful and simultaneously the most ridiculed works of fiction in modern memory. The books were flawed, but the intensity of the mockery was never really about the quality of the prose or the angst-ridden plot. Twilight was never the problem. Our contempt for teen girls was.

The ridicule was not confined to highbrow litterateur

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