I am a man and I like Twilight

In this day and age, are men still doomed to be ridiculed when standing in line to go see a ‘girly’ movie?

Ollie Gillman

I remember a time when, as a guy, admitting that I liked Twilight was as big a deal as confessing to being an alcoholic.

With the strange looks and the nervous laughs I would get when talking about the release of the Twilight saga’s Breaking Dawn: Part 2, you would think enjoying it as a man meant I had a serious problem.

Alcoholics Anonymous say the first step towards dealing with your addiction is to stop denying that you have one.

The first step to recovery

So a few weeks ago I took the first step, stopped biting my lip and admitted to my friends that I’d seen all four of the vampire films to that date, and could not wait to sink my teeth into the fifth.

It wasn’t easy to confess that I enjoyed the saga’s blood-thirsty Robert Pattinson and director-friendly and debatably-talented Kristen Stewart.

That little voice in my head told me to keep my sordid secret to myself. I noticed that tiny step back and raised eyebrow I would get from male friends when I let my vampire out of the closet and whispered that I actually enjoyed a movie aimed at teenage girls.

It was only when I was stood next to the Twi-hard that is my 15-year-old sister in the queue in Kingston Odeon, wearing sickeningly mustard chinos and a blood red woolly jumper, that I realised something: I have nothing to be ashamed of.

This is 2012

This is 2012, and in 2012 the metrosexual man is king.

If the average guy can wear ridiculously coloured trousers, carry a man bag, and watch The Only Way is Essex, or worse, Geordie Shore, then a man can most certainly go to his local cinema and cringe at the amount of girls who faint and scream at the first sight of Taylor Lautner.

And in case the Twi-curious man or woman within you was wondering, Lautner plays Jacob, the guy who has his shirt off far too often.

Now some people think you have to enjoy looking at a bare-chested werewolf to enjoy the movies.

If you can’t watch a film without getting creeped out by a man’s nipple, then I suggest that it’s you that has the problem.

However, if you won’t watch the film because the rough and ready, and, you’d’ve thought, hairy, werewolf appears to wax his chest, then yeah, I’d get that.

Men of Kingston University: You can pretend you’re not interested in Twilight, but I know, even in the butchest, hairiest Kingston Cougar, there’s a tiny part of you that wants to sit down, and take the first step towards dealing with your so-called ‘problem’.

Hi. I’m Ollie Gillman, I’m a man and I like Twilight.