Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Twilight

Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay

Looking forward to

Finally seeing twilight

From the window of

My new home on the prairie

Will the day finally come?

~Cie~

Notes:

When you invest in a historic property in a way-off-the-beaten-path town, there can be holdups. This place is not move-in ready, and getting it to that state is proving to be a challenge. It's been like pulling teeth for the electrician to get the necessary permits. He's trying his best, but the people who are supposed to be helping him aren't being very helpful. He said that usually permit people are more than happy to take your money.

It's also been like pulling teeth to get the proposal from the plumbing company. Why don't these people want our money? If they don't get the proposal to my email tomorrow, I'm going to tell them that we'll come to the office and sign it. 

With my health issues, these 250-mile round trips are knocking me on my ass. I'm an old night shift worker who has never slept well at night and these contractors like to get cracking at the ass-crack of dawn. 

I may suggest to my son that we consider packing everything from the townhouse into a pod and staying in one of those by-the-week motels in Greeley so we don't have to keep making this drive. It's really taking a toll on me. Of course, we'd have to find one that would allow cats...hell, it's always something.

Anyway, this bit is going to start coming down today, so that's a start.

30 Days of De-Objectification: Yuck

Back when “Twilight” was a big thing, I was seriously embarrassed by the number of women in my age range gushing over Robert Pattinson, a man young enough to be their son. I didn’t think of their passion as “perverted,” per se, just inappropriate.

Pattinson was in his early twenties and seemed to have the emotional maturity to make an informed decision regarding whom he wanted to be in a romantic or sexual relationship with. That these women saw him as attractive wasn’t the concern. The red flag was the level of infatuation with a person from a different generation than their own.

I saw these women as wanting to have a “second chance” at what they thought their youth should have been. They were evidently dissatisfied with some aspect of their lives. Robert Pattinson (as Edward Cullen) represented something that they saw as glamorous or exciting. They wanted that glamour and excitement to take them away from lives they saw as unfulfilling.

The problem lies in the fact that they were projecting their unfulfilled needs onto Robert Pattinson, a real person, and it made him uncomfortable.

The obsessed fans didn’t care that their mania made Robert uncomfortable.

Robert Pattinson is not Edward Cullen.

People were angry with Robert when he made negative statements regarding Twilight and his character. He likely would not have made such statements were he not being bombarded with disturbing messages from overly enthusiastic fans.

Similarly, I am aware that much of the fascination with middle-aged and senior musicians by very young women has less to do with the musicians themselves than with the infatuated girls wanting something different and exciting in their lives. They see old photos of these men and marvel at what a glamorous and thrilling time that was.

This isn’t necessarily a problem if it is taken to the next level where the person identifies the point of dissatisfaction in their own life and strives to do something about it. However, neither the “Twilight Moms” (nor, in fact, the overly passionate Twilight fans in any age range) nor the “classic rock fandom” of Tumblr take the next step. Instead, they laser-focus their attention on the image of a person, never reasoning that the image is not the actual person.

I hope for Robert Pattinson’s sake that he has managed to escape Edward Cullen and his lustful and overly enthusiastic admirers.

I hope that the girls calling themselves “classic rock fans” become actual fans rather than drooling groupies fawning over an image.

An actual fan would never objectify their heroes.

Admiration and support of performers are positive attributes.

Obsession and objectification are, simply, yuck.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~