My much adored cousin told me I just HAD to read Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1), by Stephenie Meyer, which is flying off the shelves as women indulge our addiction to the love story.

In the meantime, I've been contemplating a few things like why girls and women can be so self-defeating.

Why does the battered wife stay or go back?

Why are girls willing to put up with blatant disrespect for boyfriends?

Why do women and girls tend to glamorize "giving up everything" for their husbands and children?

What is wrong with us?

Women make up 50% of the population, yet we have so little of the world's power. Why?

Read Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1).

Edward, the beautiful vampire tells Bella, the teenage human girl, over and over that his biggest desire is to kill her. That he can barely contain himself whenever he's around her. Her own demise only turns her on. She has zero sense of self-preservation. She "Loves" him. Within the first week of meeting Edward, who immediately treats her like crap, because he wants to harm her so badly he finds it difficult to resist, she gives up her friends, her studies, her father and her mother and all of her interests. Giving up everything is "worth it." (Where have I heard that line before mothers?)

The answer to all those questions is - we think it's romantic. It makes us hot. It makes us linger in the bathtub or passes the time quickly on the treadmill.

The self-defeat, the sacrifice, the giving up of self, is in our feminine collective dialogue and it's like crack cocaine to us.

Women are addicted to this emotional drug we call "Love", but which is really a lot more like unhealthy emotional psychosis.

It starts with the Disney Princess drama as toddlers and children.

But, then we grow up and it has no effect on us our "real life?" Right?

Then why is the Twilight Series flying off the shelves?

There's no sex in the book (because he would crush her vulnerable and breakable body). But, really, is sex the most self-distructive thing girls participate in? I think not. I would hold up "Love," and our distortions of it, as the most dangerous thing to girls' confidence, their self esteem, their sense of self, their psychological and emotional health. How many girls have sex too soon for this distortion of "Love?"

Here's the other thing that gets me about this type literary dialogue, it's so prevalent in the collective female culture. Yet, the "give up everything" theme doesn't exist in men's literature.

How many relationships have actually self-destructed with these words, "But I gave up everything for you!" women/girlfriends/wives declare.

"Who asked you to? Why would you do that?" men want to know. Love is not described in the same terms, nor defined by the need for women to give up so much of themselves that they no longer actually exist, in the literary consciousness of men.

Women keep acting out the same self-distructive communication patterns and the same self-sacrificing behaviors found in books like Twilight and men are completely bewildered by it.

The only literature or culture in which this exchange - women giving up everything - shows up is in their pornography, where women aren't featured for "LOVE" as we write it, they are featured as inanimate objects for a mere moment's pleasure.

Stop this little cultural miscommunication and you most likely increase not only the duration, but the quality, of marriage in this country.

Stop buying into this ridiculously absurd self-defeating definition of "LOVE" and we might actually give our daughters a shot at healthy love, positive and fulfilling relationships, and enduring marriages. One where they get to keep their selves, their identities, their interests, their talents, their careers, their hobbies, their sense of self-respect and their physical safety.

The question is - can we have both?

Can we have our trashy teenage romance vampire romance novel where we "pretend" to give up our choices and our well-being, our life even, our families, for the "love of our life" who wants to kill us and flat out tells us that and then live empowering strong lives?

Or, do we hardwire our brains to believe that doing self-defeating things for a man is "romantic?" If our brains are hard wired this way, are we passing that down to our daughters? Especially if we allow them to indulge in this type of culture and media?

By Tracee Sioux

“No princesses, Bratz or Barbie gifts,” read the invitation for my daughter’s 5th birthday party this year. The week before we had gone to the used bookstore and sold all Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Little Mermaid and Barbie books. She was allowed to pick other, healthier, books to replace them.

I was bracing myself for a big crying fit when I told her we were banning princesses and Barbie. We had never allowed Bratz – because obviously they look like hoochies and they are brats and I certainly don’t want her immolating that kind of garbage. But, really it was all very easy and calm and I think she even enjoyed the extra attention given to her girlness and her ideas of girlness.

“We’re going to the used bookstore,” I told her one morning. “Why don’t you gather up all your princess and Barbi books so we can sell them and get other books.”

“Why can’t I keep my princess books Mommy?” she asked.

“Because all those princesses just sit around waiting for a man, the prince to come save them,” I told her. “And you do not need saving.”

“You can wake yourself up, you don’t need some guy to show up and kiss you to wake yourself from a nightmare,” I said emphatically.

This seemed to make sense to her, as I had already taught her how to wake herself up from a nightmare.

“Well, Belle doesn’t need a guy to wake her up,” she said.

“Belle gets kidnapped and then she turns the beast into a prince with her love,” I explained. “You don’t fall in love with someone who kidnaps or traps you, that’s called Stockholm Syndrome, and I guarantee that if you marry a beast someday, he will stay a beast and never, ever turn into a prince.”

“Ariel doesn’t wait for someone to wake her up,” she said thoughtfully.

“Worse,” I told her. “Ariel gives up her gift of voice and her entire family for the first man she ever sees!”

“You should never give up your gifts to get a man, especially not your voice or your ability to say what you want, and you should never let a man isolate you from your family and you not marry the first man who likes you, you should date a few more to find out what you want,” I responded.

“Cinderella could have rescued herself from her stepmother if she had got good grades and went to college to be a lawyer or a doctor, then she wouldn’t have had to deal with her step mother or her step sisters. She didn’t need Prince Philip to find her glass slipper and marry her away from them. She should have saved herself,” I said.

“What about Barbie?” she asked.

“Barbie doesn’t ever DO anything,” I explained. “She just sits around looking pretty or buying big houses or flashy cars and a bunch of clothes. Really, don’t you think there should be more to life than buying stuff? How does Barbie make the world a better place?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, I want you to be able to do things for yourself when you grow up,” I told her. “So no more princesses or Barbie.”

“Okay, can I keep this one? It has Alice in Wonderland in it and other stories too,” She asked.

It was an expensive collection of stories my mother had given her and I wasn’t yet ready to offend my mother by selling her gifts to the used bookstore, so I relented.

And we only had to return one set of princess flash cards on her birthday. After a few tears she was pretty happy about the paint set she chose instead. And really, surprisingly, I think she really gets it. I think she really does understand that it’s important for girls to do stuff and not wait around for boys to come save them. Or at least on come cellular level she gets it and my struggle will not have been in vain. Now when we go to the store, she just accepts that it’s a rule. Like not being allowed to buy Bratz or Cheetah girls paraphernalia is a rule because they seem to have lost or grown out of all their clothes.