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Peoples Daily, thursday, September 25, 2014
Strange World Meet the twilight fan who married a cut-out of robert pattinson
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ike many girls her age, 25-year-old Lauren Adkins has a huge crush on vampire Edward Cullen from the Twilight movies, played by Hollywood heartthrob Robert Pattinson. But Lauren has taken her infatuation to a whole new level – she actually got married to a life-size cardboard cut-out of her perfect man. She lives with the cut-out, goes on dates with it, and pretty much considers it her partner for life. Lauren, from Las Vegas, said that she’s been obsessed with romantic fairytale endings ever since she was a little girl. “When I was a child, I watched the Disney versions of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella until the tapes wore out,” she recalled. As she grew older, her interests
shifted towards romantic teen movies, like Twilight. After every guy she met and dated at college failed to meet her ideal of Prince Charming, she finally found what she was looking for in Edward Cullen. “It was different from any love story I’d ever seen before – after all, the leading character was as likely to suck your blood as open the door for you. I was obsessed.” “Leading man Edward was quiet and mysterious, yet superhuman and invincible,” she explained. “And so sexy. I tore through the books and I queued up outside the cinema when the film was released, desperate for my first glimpse of Edward. And when Robert Pattinson appeared on screen at midnight, he was perfect. I knew that very minute I
wanted to marry him.” A few months later, Lauren had the good fortune of meeting the man himself. Well, actually just a 6-foot tall cardboard version of him. “Of course he was made from cardboard, but that didn’t matter to me. Suddenly I was taken over with an urge to have him. I grabbed his rigid torso and stuffed him under my arm before marching to the counter and handing over a $20 note.” “Then, cramming him into my car I headed back to my apartment where I ripped off his cellophane and stood him at the foot of my bed. For the rest of the night, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Then I started thinking – the guys I’d dated before had all been so hopeless, I might as well have been with a cardboard cut-out. So where
was the shame in taking him out with me?” So Lauren began dating cardboard-Pattinson for the next few months and soon enough, he became indispensable to her. “A friend who thought I was going mad said one night: ‘If you love him so much why don’t you marry him?’ Her words rang in my ears. She was right. Why didn’t I?” She fell in love with the idea of a wedding, so she went online to find a chapel that would perform the ceremony. It wasn’t long before she found the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, where they agreed to carry out the service. The wedding took place last year – it was a $3,200 ceremony complete with a hen party, a wedding gown, an engagement ring, and 50 guests. “I walked down the aisle in January in the white wedding dress I’ve always dreamt of,” Lauren said, happily. She looked radiant in her gown, while Pattinson wore a cardboard tux, and of course, Edward Cullen’s sullen expression. “I held the reception at an art gallery and ordered champagne and a five-tier cake to share with my 50 guests. We had our honeymoon in LA and I wanted us to climb up to the Hollywood sign together. I had to carry him, and we had to do it at
night because he can’t be in the sun. But everyone makes sacrifices for the man they love, right?” “People think I’m crazy but my flat-pack R-Patz is the closest I’ll get to the real thing and he’s the one for me,” she insisted. And she has played the part of a dutiful wife in the past one year, spending quality time with her ‘husband’ at restaurants and bars. “I’m sure we’re happier than most newlyweds,” she insisted. Lauren might come across as crazy, but her website suggests that the wedding might actually be a part of a performance art project focused on the female escapist fantasy of finding true love. “I’ve used film and television’s representations of the love story and female characters in general in an attempt to understand my own expectations of romantic love,” she wrote. “Because of personal attachment to and experience with this fantasy or quest, which took a particularly strong hold of me when I discovered the intensely popular Twilight Saga, my thesis exhibition will touch on romantic expectation primarily through the main love interest, Edward Cullen.” Regardless of her reasons, I’d say Lauren’s love story is pretty unique.
Rest at your own risk: Moscow benches to publicly display sitters’ weight
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n a bid to raise fitness consciousness, Moscow’s authorities have decided to replace ordinary park benches with high-tech scales. The change, which will affect the city’s most popular parks, is being sponsored by gyms that are hoping to attract more weight-obsessed clients. A similar campaign is already in place at a public bus stop in the Netherlands, where benches are attached to large electronic panels that display the seated person’s weight in kilograms. The panels also feature nutrition-related information and gym advertisements. One of the first parks in Moscow to embrace the change is the northern Sokolniki Park – director Andrei Lapshin said that 20 weighing benches could
be placed there by the end of the year. Moscow’s media and advertising head Vladimir Chernikov supported the ambitious project by saying that he’s for ‘everything progressive and interesting’. He hinted that the high-tech benches would also be wired with electricity for phone-charging stations. This feature comes at an additional cost of 50,000 rubles ($1,300) per bench, which will be covered by advertising. It will be quite interesting to see how Muscovites react to these new benches. Personally, I’d avoid them like the plague. After a relaxing stroll at the park, the last thing I’d want is to sit on a weighing scale that spills my secrets for the world to see!