Almost ten years before you were born, the first of a series of wildly successful novels about sparkly teenage vampires was published. The Twilight series might be a bad place for me to start this conversation, because I never read any of the books or watched any of the movies. But there was a time, when the rest of the world was going crazy over it, that I thought Twilight might actually be worth checking out. What stopped me from buying and reading the series wasn't self-respect or stubborn-held personal beliefs about masculinity and adulthood, rather, it was the reviews I read online. Almost every review I read, positive or negative, lamented the irrelevance of Bella, the supposed central figure in the series. These were books written for teenage girls about a teenage girl who really didn't matter much.
Everybody was "team Jake", or "team Ed." Nobody was team Bella. Even the actress who played her in the movies seemed bored with the character.
Bella seemed to be just another addition to the long list of helpless prop princess characters; characters whose only influence on the narrative is to fall into trouble or pick a suitor; character's who begin miserable and end happily ever after, due almost entirely to the efforts of some male character. If these reviews were at all accurate, not only did I not want to read the books myself, but I worried about a generation of young girls obsessed with the series.
A month after the final installment of Twilight was published, people of all ages scrambled for the next young-adult fiction craze: The Hunger Games. I haven't read this one either, but I have seen the first movie. Here's my attention deficit synopsis:
First Act: This girl named Katniss basically martyrs herself to save her sister from competing in the post-apocalyptic murder olympics.
Second Act: Katniss meets Lenny Kravitz and gets set on fire, 'cause fashion. . .
Third Act: Katniss dominates the murder oplympics with superhuman instinct and physical ability, while showing compassion for this guy she knows--who, come to think of it, is kind of like the "Bella" of The Hunger Games--and then figures out a way to save both of their lives.
From my limited experience with Twilight and The Hunger Games, it's obvious that Katniss is superior to Bella in every way. Bella is an ancillary character. Katniss is a hero. Bella is a sadpants. Katniss is a badass. Bella hangs out on the sideline while the male characters compete for her affection. Katniss saves lives and climbs trees and kills her own dinner.
As I write this, your mother and I are still 4 weeks away from knowing whether you're a girl or a boy. But it doesn't matter. Regardless of your gender, be a Katniss, not a Bella. Be the hero in your narrative, not just the love interest in someone else's. Too many people spend their first 20 or 30 years, or even their whole lives seeing themselves as a secondary character in someone else's story. If you make yourself ancillary, when the hero leaves--as will happen at some point in your life--they take the story with them. Then you end up lost for weeks, months, years, struggling to construct a new narrative around a character you barely know--yourself.
I'm not asking you to be selfish or narcissistic. I'm only asking you to never forget your true value. There will be times when your role changes. There will be times when you lift up and propel other people towards their goals, instead of focusing on your own. When the time comes, be brave and selfless. But never forget that however you may impact someone else's story, you are the central character of your story.
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