Girls on Film: Stephenie Meyer, of The Host and Twilight fame, is not anti-women

Meyer has repeatedly been attacked for the problematic messages of her novels — but the truth is far more complicated

The Host
(Image credit: Facebook/The Host (MOVIE))

Stephenie Meyer's unlikely, meteoric rise to the top of the young-adult literature world began nearly 10 years ago — on the morning of June 2, 2003, to be exact. The Mormon mother had just woken up from an elaborate dream in which an average girl and a sparkly, gorgeous vampire discussed how they were falling in love even as he struggled to control his bloodlust for her. After completing her morning errands, Meyer sat down to translate her dream into prose, and over the course of three months, she turned it into a novel. Twilight, of course, was the start of a saga that would become a global phenomenon and turn the homemaker into one of the world's most commercially successful authors.

Over the course of the last decade, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series has inspired a passion in its most devoted fans that is only rivaled by the passion of its detractors. But when the Twilight Saga came to an end in November 2012 with the release of the series' last film, Breaking Dawn: Part 2, Meyer's fans and haters each put down their arms.

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Monika Bartyzel

Monika Bartyzel is a freelance writer and creator of Girls on Film, a weekly look at femme-centric film news and concerns, now appearing at TheWeek.com. Her work has been published on sites including The Atlantic, Movies.com, Moviefone, Collider, and the now-defunct Cinematical, where she was a lead writer and assignment editor.