Bella, the female character at the centre of the Twilight books written by Stephenie Meyer, is the butt of Bidisha's criticism and puzzlement in today's Guardian.
She criticises Bella's "passivity, the oppressivness of her boyfriends (presented as protectiveness), the fetishisation of female victimhood and the unstinting justification of the guys' abusiveness have spurred a strong feminist backlash against the books – a backlash which I fully support. Part of our sense of disturbance and bafflement is that while all the misogynist elements of Twilight are detectable in mainstream arts and the media, they are rarely created by women".
She goes on to ask: "Why would a dynamic, creative, prolific and talented woman like Stephenie Meyer write a protagonist as useless as this? Why would she create bullying males and set them up as love objects? Do young women despise themselves so much that the very best they can fantasise about is trailing around after not one but two bullies? It's puzzling."
Indeed it is.
