The part you’re missing is agency. It’s not just about what appeals to men or women. Whether or not Bella is in a situation that a woman might envy, she does nothing in the story. She is an object to be fawned over and protected.
I mean isn’t it a little odd that apparently men and women both like movies where men do everything? Maybe that’s a trend worth investigating?
If you want a Female Gaze movie, find a movie where the man is reduced to an object that does nothing while women run the show. It’s shockingly hard to do.
she does nothing in the story.
That’s simply not true. You’re mistaking the character’s physical vulnerability (in the context of supernatural beings, no less) for helplessness and/or passivity, of which Bella is neither.
If you want a Female Gaze movie, find a movie where the man is reduced to an object that does nothing while women run the show.
No, that’s inverting the male gaze and calling it the female gaze. The criteria for the female gaze would be based on stereotypes that appeal to women sexually. A strong man leaping to the heroine’s rescue could be exactly what women want to see in their movie’s men, particularly if those men are also cast as submissive to the heroine in other ways, like losing arguments with her, being the butt of her jokes, or changing in the stereotypical way women try to change men (e.g. reforming the “bad boy” into a faithful, stand-up man so the woman can have the best of both worlds, so to speak). Plenty of romantic comedies marketed to women fit those criteria.
What does Bella do in the story? Dad buys her a truck, dude saves her from a car accident, stalks her, plays baseball in front of her, then the family chips in to save her from The Tracker or whatever. She just kind of hangs out. She doesn’t even decide to move to Forks in the first place.
Also, please look up the term “Male Gaze”. It’s a real term. I didn’t invent it. And it doesn’t simply mean “stuff that men like to see.”
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-the-male-gaze-definition/
In the context of cinema, it’s mostly men who write the films we watch, mostly men who make those films, and it is men who are usually the target audience.
Therefore, men are usually given the lead in the stories themselves while female characters are assigned functions that are limited to serving the goals of those male protagonists
“Reforming a bad boy” is literally a woman serving a man. Especially if the “goal” of the man is to get with the woman.
Show me a romcom where the man serves the desires of the woman and doesn’t get to fuck her at the end.
