A new edition of Twilight flips the genders of all the characters
By Dan Selcke
For the tenth anniversary edition of Twilight, author Stephanie Meyer has released an all-new version of the story where the genders of the characters are reversed.
It’s been ten yeas since Twilight, Stephanie Meyer’s tale of a moody girl named Bella and the handsome horror movie monsters who love her, first hit book shelves. Over those ten years, the series has received plenty of criticism, both from people who think the story is regressive in terms of how it depicts women, and from those who just think it’s awful. Meyer is sort of engaging with that first set by releasing Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, a version of the story from the first book with the genders of all the characters flipped.
According to an interview Meyer gave on Good Morning America, her publisher originally asked for a forward to the original book, and Meyer thought, “Well, maybe something more interesting.” Whatever else this is, it is more interesting. In Life and Death, Bella becomes Beau, vampire Edward becomes Edythe, and werewolf Jacob becomes Julie. Save for Julie, those are some hard names to live down, but never mind.
Meyer was inspired to write this version in response to numerous people who had labeled Bella as a damsel in distress. “It’s always bothered me a little bit because anyone surrounded by superheroes is going to be … in distress,” she said. “We don’t have the powers. I thought, ‘What if we switched it around a bit and see how a boy does,’ and, you know, it’s about the same.” It’s for someone braver than I to read Life and Death and determine if it really is “about the same,” but I do appreciate that Meyer did something beyond writing a forward. At least she’s industrious.
Of course, part of the reason Meyer did this was to introduce younger readers to the series, as the ones who grew up on it are “all 10 years older now and so there’s a whole new generation.” We wouldn’t want the dump trucks of money to stop their weekly deliveries to her house.