Chloe Bates is not alone. The 15-year-old is in love, like every high school girl, with Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner. Her wall is adorned with Lautner’s photos and she has his name written all over her journal.
Teen icons exist in every generation. In the past, it used to be Rick Springfield, David Cassidy, or Johnny Depp. For now, Lautner and Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson are taking the hot seat. It also has never been better for the girls of today with technology’s assistance to bring them closer to their “imaginary boyfriends”. And it is this phase which gives them an idea about love before discovering what real love is.
“They’re practising feelings of love and attachment and attraction and romance,” Los Angeles-based psychologist Wendy Walsh said. “These are all new feelings, and what a safe way to play them out — in the privacy of their own room with a poster of Taylor Lautner.”
“It’s so much more elaborate than it used to be,” USC cultural historian Leo Braudy added, referring to the media exposure of today’s heartthrobs. “Every movie comes fit with its posters and its icons and its bobble headed dolls.”
Chloe never had a boyfriend but she believes that Lautner would be a good match for her because he’s “that fun, hang out, let’s-play-video-games kind of guy that I think would be really fun right now.”
“I like him because I can feel like that might actually happen, like this guy could be real,” she said.
Her mother is also all for Lautner, whom she considers “a wholesome, realistic role model.”
“He’s the right age and super cute,” Chloe’s mother said of the actor. “It totally brings me back to when I was that age and having those fantasies.”
