From Brat Girl Summer to Feral Werewolf Fall

I Hope You’re Ready For My Big-Bad-Feminist-Werewolf Era!

 Just Kidding. I Literally Do Not Care If You Are Ready

<<Presses Play>>

CW: Patriarchy, violence, rape, assault, forced birth, death

One day, I was driving through downtown. It was beautiful outside and I had my windows open, with a green light to turn right onto the highway. I was halfway across the intersection, large groups of pedestrians on either side of the road waiting for their walk lights to say go, when a giant, white, pickup-truck ran the opposing red light and plowed through the intersection, straight towards me. As I slammed on my brakes and the truck peeled through, inches from the front of my hood, I reflexively screamed at the top of my lungs in fury, “I WILL EAT YOUR GODDAMNED GRANDMOTHER, YOU DICKHEAD!” ...Not all of us have reasonable reflexes, l will admit. 

I had to reflect on this reflex of mine for quite a bit afterwards - that I essentially screamed out of my car window that I was the big bad wolf at someone cutting me off in traffic. It felt like a legitimate reason for evaluating if I perhaps needed to go to counseling of some kind.

The T-bone collision narrowly avoided, I felt the uneasy stares of pedestrians looking through my car window as I slowly put my foot back on the gas, making my way through the rest of the intersection, everyone very clearly having heard me scream ferally, “I WILL EAT YOUR GODDAMNED GRANDMOTHER, YOU DICKHEAD!” at a runaway truck…so…you know…there's that.

Being aware of the strange things that I apparently scream at trucks that almost kill me really sets the tone for my discussion today on why I love the werewolf archetype (...you’re welcome).

Like any repeating theme, character, trope, or archetype: recurrence in our stories and in our storytelling lets us know that there is something that deserves a closer look. There’s an itch our collective psyche needs to scratch, a song stuck in our head for reasons we can't fathom, an elusive ghost haunting our house. 

One of my favorite archetypes is that of the werewolf. I take a ghoulish delight in the brutal act of the transformation, of control and of losing it, of feralness, of becoming something unbridled and unbidden. The archetype of the werewolf requires, by its very nature, the deep darkness of night and the silvery light of the moon. A werewolf has to embrace dark and light simultaneously.

I’ve always felt the werewolf archetype was the perfect dance partner for feminism and for bodies that grew and changed and shifted. That werewolves and feminism were lit exquisitely under the glow of a full moon, dancing a dramatic tango to the sound of wind in the trees, bats skating overhead, the rustle of thick undergrowth, the howl of hungry wolves, the bellowing laughter of lungs. 

I’m not the first to link this wild, unstoppable, transformation under the moon to the experience of inhabiting a body that is made prey in a patriarchy. That bleeds once a month. That shifts through other archetypes such as the maiden/the middling/the crone…the hydra. Of being feral and free and fierce, and of being unwanted for that ferocity.

Brat Girl Summer to Feral Werewolf Fall is an easy transition, I assure you. And I am (obviously) here for it.

In a culture where womxn are heavily restricted and regulated (see: forced pregnancies, forced births, high mortality rates during births, high sexual assault and rape rates, low convicted rapist rates, etc. etc.), the appeal of running naked and powerful through the woods, in a body safer from sexual assault than your human one, unstoppable and fierce, is very appealing. 

Girls and womxn experience the violence of sexual harassment, assault, and rape at unprecedented rates in the U.S.. I’ve lived through it myself many times: my skull slammed into a concrete wall. My body pinned to a bed. Scrapes on my collarbone. Bruises on my arms. My lungs burning and heaving from fear and from running, from trying to get away as a man followed me outside at my after-school job. My ankle twisted from turning too fast, making myself disappear behind a corner so he wouldn’t see which way I went. Half-moon shaped cuts on my palms from clenching my fists so hard they bled, as I tried to be so still and quiet he wouldn’t see me. Scrapes on my knees from being shoved onto the ground. 

So to me, the concept of a werewolf under a full moon - the violence of a body tearing itself apart, rending itself into someone new, breaking its own bones and healing them in different shapes, trading skin for shaggy fur - is like a strange type of ASMR: Satisfying. Brutal. Pain providing power instead of taking it away. The werewolf is someone who is definitively going to transform, have power, and exist in a body free of restraint…To me, that transformation feels kind of like spitting a giant loogie into the face of those who would force their unwanted hands onto vulnerable, soft, flesh.

Because suddenly, in the dead of night under a glowing orange orb…what big teeth I have now…what sharp fangs…what large, finely-tuned, ears…what glowing, amber eyes to better see you with. 

Excellent stories of transformation, power, and womxn:

• Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse

• Little Red Riding Hood, by Brothers Grimm, illustrated by Daniel Egnéus

• Ancillary Justice , by Ann Leckie

• This Is How You Lose the Time War, By Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone