Bella from Twilight and other women in literary fantasy worlds

Everyone's obsessed with Twilight lately, what with New Moon coming out. And I must admit, I loved the books. I sobbed at the end of every one.

The movies, eh, I could care less about. I saw the first one with my mom and sister, and will probably end up at New Moon at some point or another. Bella just does not portray well on screen, especially with Kristen Stewart's interpretation.

So there are people who absolutely love love LOVE Twilight. And there are people who absolutely hate hate HATE it. Mostly the nay-sayers are lame people who haven't even tried to read any of them and are most likely snarky males who are just jealous they don't have the panty-dropping skills that an imaginary vampire does.

But there are nay-sayers who occasionally speak a word of truth about the Twilight series that disturbs me. Twilight is setting up so many tween girls for a life of - best case scenario - disappointment because no man in real life is like the men/vampires/werewolves portrayed in today's media.

Worst case scenario - they end up in a controlling, violent relationship based on "passion," instead of mutual respect, clear communication, sexual attraction and fun & happiness.

So let's go back to the last obnoxious tween book-to-movie series sensation that swept millions - this time of girls AND boys - off their feet. Yes. I'm talking Harry Potter.

I picked the series back up again at book five like eight years later after I put it down after I read book four right after it came out. I kind of remember why I put it down in the first place.

The character who us lovely, budding young ladies are supposed to learn the most from (and I do especially relate to her because of my curly, frizzy hair [like a pre-makeover Anne Hathaway in Princess Diaries] and my, like, totally awesome brains, obviously) is Hermione.

Hermione is respected by the teachers. Hermione is clearly the smartest student at the school. But her supposed best friends reject her ideas and scoff at her warnings on every other page. Ohhh it's just Hermione. Silly Hermione, she always wants to study.

Plus, not nearly enough smart boys are flirting with her, besides a long distance pen pal-ship with some German quidditch dude I think.

(Don't do it Hermione! He isn't geographically available!)

Anyway - hair type and too much homework aside - I've started to get worried. What are these incredibly successful business women (I've got to hand it to Stephenie Meyer and J.K. Rowling for their incredible ideas, their ability to build worlds and their bags and bags of money) teaching us about how to be a female character?

I posed this question to my boyfriend one night (geez, at this point I should really change my blog name to OhMyInterestingThingsMyBoyfriendSays). Why aren't there more popular female heroines? Why aren't they portrayed in a way so that tweens can become obsessive fans over them and intellectuals can agree that they're a good example for young'uns today?

He gave me another example. Wonder Woman, he says, is a top three player in the D.C. Comic universe. She's just as powerful and just as much of a leader as Superman and Batman. However, in our universe, her sales and popularity has been appallingly low, compared to her male counterparts.

(I know I have too many asides in this post as it is - but in light of my recent posts, I feel like I must point out he is not a video-games-and-comic-books-only nerdy guy. He's great. And, like, totally popular. Not a vampire or a wizard, but I did the best I could.)

So anyway, where are the strong women characters? Of our time or others? How come we've come far enough for women to not have to write behind pseudonyms and instead become powerfully popular literary icons? But we haven't come far enough for those women to invent useful female characters?

Do you have any examples to prove me wrong?