Why I’m Still Team Jacob After All These Years

Today is Taylor Lautner‘s birthday, and it’s as good a time as any to make a confession: as much as I find teens to be insufferable weird bodies full of overdramatic angst, I love the second film in the Twilight franchise. New Moon is awesome. New Moon is gorgeous. New Moon is a movie I saw twice in the movie theater, willingly. And like many other Twilight fans, I was presented with a complicated dilemma: am I Team Edward or Team Jacob?

I still think about this years after the movie hit theaters in 2009. Sure, the movie is pretty hokey and dumb, and its central conflict — a teenage girl’s heartbreak after being dumped by her vampire boyfriend, which she processes by jumping straight into the hulking arms of her werewolf friend — is, let’s be honest, pretty insane. Taking this melodrama with a hefty heaping of salt (this is me, trying to find the good in everything), New Moon perfectly nails the experience of heartbreak: with its moody soundtrack full of NPR-approved indie artists (Lykke Li! Grizzly Bear! St. Vincent! Even Thom Yorke!), the movie captures the pain and misery of rejection, especially for a teenager who hasn’t experienced enough of it to realize it’s just something one has to go through, over and over again. (Cool advice for teens: don’t get too hung up on the person you’re in love with at sixteen. Fifteen years from now, you’ll find him or her on Facebook — or whatever future version of Facebook that we’ll be checking to stalk our high school classmates — and laugh at how someone you once loved now has a baby with a really stupid name.)

[Insert “Renesmee” joke here for the Twilight superfans.]

With lovelorn agony enough to get me in the door (plus, the alcohol my friends and I snuck in with us, and the promise of heckling), the hilarious struggle of choosing between Edward Cullen and Jacob Black kept me in my seat. On the one hand, you have an immortal teenage vampire who will never age past seventeen and whose stalker tendencies are mistaken for romantic gestures because, oh man, isn’t he just so dreamy? And then on the other hand, you have a muscular motorcycle-riding werewolf who will keep you warm in the middle of a snowstorm but will also possibly rip off your face because he’s so full of passionate anger. Which one could you possibly choose?

Like pretty much every love triangle in cinematic history, we’re meant to believe the woman torn between two men is as lucky as she is frustrated by having two hot numbers from which to pick a mate. This is, per usual, a lie, as both options are pretty awful. Yes, they’re both handsome in different ways, but both Edward and Jacob exhibit particularly troubling behaviors (the stalking, the violent emotional outbursts). But, much like a presidential election, we have to think of this as picking the lesser evil. Sure, there could have been a third option — some handsome, earthy, environmentally focused young man in Bella’s Pacific Northwest town who could swoop in and save her from these supernatural potential boyfriends. And he’d hopefully not have dreadlocks or listen to Phish. Yet, much like voting on the Green Party ticket, it doesn’t really do much. So we’re left with the vampire and the werewolf.

For me, picking Jacob is a purely aesthetic decision. I don’t go for Robert Pattinson‘s wimpy, sad-eyed immortality. And considering Edward’s habit of showing up all the damn time, I count that as a major strike against him. (I like my space! Or, at the very least, I like to be the one who chooses not to keep emotional distance!)

Meanwhile, there’s hunky Taylor Lautner. I mean, I feel disgusting saying that. Yes, he turns 23 today, meaning he was just 17 when New Moon was released. I don’t feel good about this. BUT I WAS BEING FORCED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN A 17-YEAR-OLD WEREWOLF AND AN ETERNALLY 17-YEAR-OLD VAMPIRE. Yes, I should have gone with the centuries-old kid, but I’m sorry: the idea of being with a pale moody weirdo does not excite me, whereas the warm-bodied muscular dummy? I’m into that. (Plus, we share an affinity for jorts.)

I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed. Team Jacob for life.

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Photos: Summit Entertainment