"Twilight," the vampire romance taking the nation by storm, tells the story of Edward, a smoldering young bloodsucker who falls in love with Bella, his high school science partner. Sexual temptation abounds in the wildly popular book series and movie, but Edward, unlike most of his kind, has been equipped with a moral compass. The eternal teenager is sick with desire, but true love gives him the will to resist, and in bookstores and cineplexes nationwide the message is clear: Just say no.

A decade after Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera ushered in an era of hypersexualized images and sounds targeted at teens, there is still plenty of raunch in pop culture, but there are also some signs that the tides may be turning.

Eighteen-year-old music phenom Taylor Swift has scaled the charts with narratives that suggest there is more to romance than sex. Swift's former boyfriend Joe Jonas and his siblings in the pop group the Jonas Brothers wear purity rings to signal their vows to remain chaste prior to marriage. Disney franchises like "High School Musical" and "Hannah Montana" peddle wholesomeness fervently.

Of course, going back to the Beatles and before, there has always been room for fresh-faced innocence, or the appearance of it. (Even Spears marketed her wholesomeness once upon a time). Still, the popularity of "Twilight" suggests the trend could have some traction. In both its book and movie form, "Twilight" has been ecstatically embraced by teenage girls.

Go to a movie theater, and you will see teenage girls lining up for their second or third viewing (sometimes consecutively). Glance at the laptop, cellphone, or iPod of a teenage girl and you may well see Edward's visage as wallpaper. Why? Because it turns out that chivalry isn't dead. It's undead. Edward the vampire has installed himself in the hearts of many teenage girls as their romantic ideal, in large part because the way he treats Bella is so different from the behavior of many real-life teenage boys.