‘Twilight’: Why Were All the Boys in Forks in Love With Bella?
From the day Bella Swan transferred to Forks High, she was completely enamored with Edward Cullen. The vampire’s good looks and strange behavior left her feeling intrigued. And while it took a while for Bella and Edward to establish a connection and a relationship, Bella never had a shortage of other suitors. In fact, plenty of the boys in Forks seemed to be positively infatuated with Bella throughout the Twilight series.
Over the years, Twilight fans have wondered why so many of the Forks High boys were so intrigued by Bella. In Midnight Sun (which is Twilight told from Edward’s perspective) Edward even describes Bella as “ordinary.” Still, Bella has no shortage of other males who were showering her with attention.
Why did Bella get so much male attention in ‘Twilight’?
But if even Bella’s future soulmate found her ordinary, why did she have so many suitors? An excerpt from Midnight Sun seems to imply that the boys in Forks were just entranced with someone new. It didn’t seem to matter to them if Bella was stunning or more plain, they were simply excited by her arrival.
“Today, all thoughts were consumed with the trivial drama of a new addition to the small student body here,” Edward narrates in Midnight Sun. “It took so little to work them all up. I’d seen the new face repeated in thought after thought from every angle. Just an ordinary human girl. The excitement over her arrival was tiresomely predictable—like flashing a shiny object at a child. Half the sheep-like males were already imagining themselves in love with her, just because she was something new to look at.”
What does Bella look like according to Stephenie Meyer?
But if Bella was truly ordinary, what does she actually look like? Stephenie Meyer (who authored the Twilight books) intentionally left a detailed description of Bella out of the books. According to the author, she wanted readers to be able to fluidly step into Bella’s shoes. The writer felt that putting in a detailed physical description would prevent some people from easily doing that. Still, the author did share her idea of Bella’s looks on her website.
“In my head, Bella is very fair-skinned, with long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes,” the Twilight author shared. “Her face is heart-shaped—a wide forehead with a widow’s peak, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, and then a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. Her lips are a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jawline. Her eyebrows are darker than her hair and more straight than they are arched. She’s five foot four inches tall, slender but not at all muscular, and weighs about 115 pounds. She has stubby fingernails because she has a nervous habit of biting them.”
The ‘Twilight’ author based Bella’s many suitors on her real-life experiences
It may be hard for some Twilight fans to believe that Bella’s looks would inspire such obsession. However, Meyer claims that that aspect of the books was based in some truth. After moving from Arizona to Utah, the writer experienced a surge of male attention similar to that of her character. Perhaps, Meyer’s anecdote will help more fans buy into the theory that the boys in Forks were in love with Bella simply because she was a fresh face.
