In today's Newsweek posted on Msn.com was a certain article that caught my attention. For a while now, media has caught on to the very odd fact that people, mostly women, have an interesting pull towards vampires. Why? Well here's a piece of the article that stood out to me - mostly because, personally I don't get it the intense attraction that has pulled people into reading millions of books, watching multiple tv dramas, watching movies beginning in 1897 and continuing into today.
But it's that potential for death that gives vampires a lot of their sexual edge. "It's kind of like autoerotic asphyxia, except that's real," says Katherine Ramsland, professor of psychology at DeSales University. "In terms of fantasy, the vampire mystique is 90 percent sexual. It's a metaphor for dangerous sex. Because if it goes wrong, you're gone." For her book, Piercing the Darkness, Ramsland spent several years researching the rabid vampire fan, those folks who actually act out the Dracula fantasy. Many are professionals (lawyers, stockbrokers, politicians); some are simply lost. What struck Ramsland as rather odd was that most women wanted to be the victim rather than the hunter. "I think it's kind of weird to be the impaled one, the seduced one," she says. "There were so many women who wanted to lose control. And I thought women had come a little further than that."
Bite Me! Why We Love Vampires
By Joan Raymond
(http://www.newsweek.com/id/207128/page/1)
The article even spoke of festivals of a sort being created in California. Why? Really? Like seriously? I suppose largely I am the odd woman out as many, if not all, of my friends have become obsessed by sparkly objects - and not in the jewelry cases we see so frequently in the malls. From Bram Stoker's Dracula to Meyer's Edward to the new hit TV series True Blood, the fad doesn't look like it's dying out anytime soon... pun intended.
But it's that potential for death that gives vampires a lot of their sexual edge. "It's kind of like autoerotic asphyxia, except that's real," says Katherine Ramsland, professor of psychology at DeSales University. "In terms of fantasy, the vampire mystique is 90 percent sexual. It's a metaphor for dangerous sex. Because if it goes wrong, you're gone." For her book, Piercing the Darkness, Ramsland spent several years researching the rabid vampire fan, those folks who actually act out the Dracula fantasy. Many are professionals (lawyers, stockbrokers, politicians); some are simply lost. What struck Ramsland as rather odd was that most women wanted to be the victim rather than the hunter. "I think it's kind of weird to be the impaled one, the seduced one," she says. "There were so many women who wanted to lose control. And I thought women had come a little further than that."
Bite Me! Why We Love Vampires
By Joan Raymond
(http://www.newsweek.com/id/207128/page/1)
The article even spoke of festivals of a sort being created in California. Why? Really? Like seriously? I suppose largely I am the odd woman out as many, if not all, of my friends have become obsessed by sparkly objects - and not in the jewelry cases we see so frequently in the malls. From Bram Stoker's Dracula to Meyer's Edward to the new hit TV series True Blood, the fad doesn't look like it's dying out anytime soon... pun intended.
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