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70m copies worldwide and
spent 102 weeks on the New
York Times bestseller list, knocking
Harry Potter from the No 1 slot in the
process. The first film has so far
grossed $382m and Meyer,
subsequently included in Time
magazine’s list of 100 most influential
people. A quick straw poll of the Stylist
office also proves that it’s the guilty
secret of more than a few 30-
somethings in the UK.
But that’s nothing compared to the
Twilight Moms, a growing breed of US
women, who’ve long since waved
goodbye to puberty, but whose
obsession with the vampire saga
has become rather extreme. To be a
Twilight Mom (TM) you have to fulfil
one of the following criteria, you can
join: 1. You’re over 25. 2. You’re
married. 3. You have a child.
The TMs take their dedication
to all things Twilight (especially
all things Robert Pattison), very
seriously. They hold conventions,
camp outside hotels, bake
Twilight cakes and generally
terrify their husbands with their
teenage obsession. If
you’re assuming this
is exclusive to a few,
slightly ‘unhinged’
women with
nothing better to
do, think again.
The Twilight Moms’
Facebook page has
nearly 4,000 friends,
there are nearly 6,502
followers on Twitter
and the twilightmom.
com website gets
4,128 visits every day.
One person who can
more than testify for
its popularity is Lisa Hansen, 37,
a working mother of two in Utah
who created the twilightmoms.com
website in early 2008. “The fact
I shared an obsession with my
teenage neighbours made me think
there was something severely wrong
with me,” she remembers. “I was
obsessed with the books. It was my
shameful secret. So I set up the site to
prove I wasn’t going through a midlife
crisis. Within weeks I discovered
there were thousands of women out
there at my stage of life who were
equally hung up on Twilight.”
She’s not wrong. A quick browse
through the comments made by
Twilight Moms (TMs) on the Internet
shows just how many of them are out
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there. “I can’t wait for New Moon.
I’m so happy I’m not alone in
my obsession,” enthuses Jo
Anne Torrance-Frisby from
Wisconsin. And, “[Twilight]
brought out the ‘inner woman’
in all of us moms; something we
thought to be long lost,” reveals
Beth Johnson from Florida.
A SCARY OBSESSION
From breaking onto film sets, to
following the stars of the movies,
the TMs shed their usual mundane
duties like work, children and
domestic chores to devote themselves
“Adult women have hooked onto
Twilight because it helps us relive
our virginity, minus the heartache”
THE OBSESSIVE FERVOUR
OF SOME ‘TWILIGHT MOMS’
KNOWS NO BOUNDS
to their vampire fixation.
“My family think I’m mad but
I take my Edward Cullen and Bella
Rose plastic dolls in my purse
everywhere I go. I’ve read each of the
four books nine times since January
and listen to either the audio book or
the movie soundtrack every time I
drive my car. I even ring up the movie
theatre before I go and base my film
choice around whether the New Moon
trailer will be played,” admits
self-confessed Twilight obsessive
Andrea Hayes, aged 34, from Florida.
She’s even turned her passion for
vampire love into a book, Confessions
Of A Twilight Mom.
And Sherman admits that her
Twilight obsession has pushed her
to do things she previously wouldn’t
have dreamed of: “This is the first
time I’ve put myself first in my life.
I think it’s been healthy for me but
my family doesn’t see it that way.
“I’ve watched Twilight at the
cinema 35 times and am late to pick
my son up from school because I’m
watching Edward Cullen. I’ve spent
money on Twilight clothes and books
that I would have normally spent on
the kids. And I probably spend eight
to ten hours a day on the Internet
LOVE AT FIRST BITE: KRISTEN
STEWART AND ROBERT PATTINSON
STAR IN THE FILM ADAPTATIONS
writing, reading or watching
something Twilight-related.”
Rhonda Domurat, a 31-year-old TM
admits she sometimes forgets to feed
her kids or clean her house due to her
obsession with Twilight. “You have to
understand,” Domurat explains,
“I will do anything for Twilight.”
And she has. Not only has she
visited the film set more times
than she can remember, she has
even ‘taken’ home Twilight
memorabilia, “I scored a tree from
a location garden they were
shooting at,” she confesses.
TEEN ATTRACTION
So what exactly is it about the
fictitious characters that have
got grown women behaving like
love-struck teens?
After reading Meyer’s books,
40-year-old Penny, a furniture
designer from London who’s
been married 11 years, says she
got butterflies in her stomach
remembering her first love. “It
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