Has anybody else gotten the memo going around? The one reminding us to dump buckets of ridicule and disdain on pre-teen girls?

Because, they’re getting kind of big for their britches, you know. Every few years they join forces to bring about these huge cultural phenomena, like Twilight, and before that Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers and Hello Kitty and friendship bracelets and the Disney Channel and Titanic and those one-hit wonders, the Beatles. So, accordingly, they should be universally crushed and stomped, because — as everyone knows — if tweeners like it (read girl tweeners), it must be lame and contemptible.

SF Gate columnist Mark Morford, who usually saves his most pointed skewerings for Republicans caught in sex scandals and other delicious schadenfreudian slips, slipped a cog and spent a whole column hating on the Twilight series, Sarah Palin and Catholic bishops, in that order. He called New Moon a “hugely boring, soft-core soap opera about teen depression and vacuous undead male models.” I think I got a little spit on me.

I get it. It’s not great art. It’s not great cinema. There’s a little too much shirtlessness and not enough — I don’t know what, musical numbers? You could say the same thing about Land of the Lost.

Morford’s not alone. My daughter is hearing unsolicited commentary from brothers, cousins, uncles, boys in school. Poor kid, last year she loved Wall-E just as much, and nobody felt compelled to rhetorically puke in her popcorn. But there’s something about beautiful boys — and girls enjoying them — that drives people right up the freaking wall. Johnny Depp knows something about this. David Cassidy, Donnie Osmond, Brad Pitt, even our revered James Dean, spent a little time in the bright hectic hell of being thought cute by girls. The bell tolls for thee, Zac Efron.

If young girls really, really like it, then self-respecting boys and men hate it. Thirty years ago it was disco. Another decade or so and it was Titanic and poor Leo DiCaprio. I’m not exactly sure what it’s all about, but it certainly could be power. Girls choosing. Taking a last backward double-axel into fantasy and possibility. And cherry-picking their escorts based on insane criteria. This year, to win a girl’s attention a boy needs to to sparkle, fight werewolves, and take her flying. Go, Bella.

To the haters — you guys who spent or are now spending 7th grade practicing spitting, farting for fun, and slouching through homeroom drawing pictures of orcs (or Pokemon or X-wing fighters or B52s), this too shall pass. Get over it. The girls will be back before you know it. In the meantime, honestly, would it kill you to sparkle a little?

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