I dont know, I think people arentaking it all a bit too seriously.
I have read them, all of them!(And its sort of a guilty pleasure. Although I dont have much interest in seeing the films, its enough to keep it in my head!)
I wasn't too bothered about the abstinence thing, because it seemed to me to be more about the not wanting to kill her/feed from her etc. I always got the idea that he used the "not until we are married" thing as an excuse not to turn her into a vampire more than anything else. Not to mention Edward is about 100 yrs old, and would be from a time where sex before marriage wasn't exactly someting to be proud of. (Although he has had plenty of time to get used to the 20th Century!)But do you know, its nice to occasionally not have to plough through a badly written sex scene!
I think that sometimes people look too deeply into these books.
I read a lot of trash when I was a teenager, (Virginia Andrews anyone?) Sometimes it really is just a good read. And if it gets more people interested in reading,and they move on to other stuff, that has to be a good thing.
Stephanie Meyers is Morman,so I suppose she is writing from her own beliefs. I think it's not such a bad thing for young girls to see that you dont always HAVE to have sex just because you are going out with someone.
The sexism thing, well it is there: Bella is protected at all times, leans on Edward, and pretty much abandons her friends and other relationships because of her dependence on him. She has to be saved from various situations all the time by him, and ends up doing all the cooking/housework for her dad. All the men are bigger and stronger than the girls, (Even the female werewolf is not as strong or powerful as the males) Edward tells her constantly that she cant look after herself, and the worst bit, because she is so alluring to him, if something happens and he cant control himself with her, it will be HER fault.
So yeah, sexist. But its fiction. Good fiction? maybe not, just escapism. But not much different to a lot of other stuff out there already. Enchanted, Beauty and the Beast, (practically all of Disneys princess films, Pretty Woman, most Reece Witherspoon stuff, Sin City, James Bond.......the list goes on. Ive watched most of them, and liked some of them. But I dont take it too seriously...
And is it a good thing for young girls to be obsessed with these books? I'm not sure that its any different to any of the obsessions that have been going on with young girls/women every generation. Most young girls are at some point or another obsessed with getting the "perfect" guy and Edward is (for them): He's Handsome/Pretty, strong, bit of a knight on a white horse, and of course he's dangerous. (And a bit stalkerish, with all that watching through the windows, IMO)
Just what every girl wants.I think the majority of them will grow out of it.