Straight Women Hot for Gay Vampires

In an essay for Esquire magazine, writer Stephen Marche sinks his teeth into the current vampire trend, arguing that, "Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men."

As one example, Marche considers the popularity of the Twilight film, in which Robert Pattinson (pictured) plays the vampire Edward Cullen.

"Edward, the romantic hero of the Twilight series, is a sweet, screwed-up high school kid, and at the beginning of his relationship with Bella, she is attracted to him because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her," Marche writes. "This exact scenario happened several times in my high school between straight girls and gay guys who either hadn't figured out they were gay or were still in the closet. Twilight's fantasy is that the gorgeous gay guy can be your boyfriend, and for the slightly awkward teenage girls who consume the books and movies, that's the clincher. Vampire fiction for young women is the equivalent of lesbian porn for men: Both create an atmosphere of sexual abandon that is nonthreatening. That's what everybody wants, isn't it?"

Read more here.