Why Are There so Few Sympathetic Female Monsters?

Gimme more monster girls!!!

by Kate Gardner | 11:45 am, July 18th, 2018

This began its life as a piece on the obsession our culture has with sexy movie monsters, but as with
many ideas, it began to change as soon as words hit paper. It’s one thing to read about how women are
attracted to the monstrous as a way to challenge social and sexual norms, but it’s another when you ask
“where are the female monsters?”

A quick Google search shows that female monsters are oftentimes evil and highly sexualized, while
male monsters are allowed a modicum of sympathy for the most part, especially if they’re seen as
romantic leads or as hero characters.

Why are there so few sympathetic female monsters? Where is the Beauty and the Beast retelling where
the prince is beautiful and the princess is beastly? Why, when there are female monsters, are they
always portrayed as sexual deviants or just plain sexualized compared to their human female
counterparts?

Women, as we know, can only occupy a few roles in fiction. They can be children or maidens, chaste
and pure. They can be mother figures, or crones. Or they can be evil, cruel beings, who usually display
aggressive sexual behavior and must be punished for deviating from sexual norms. To ask for a female
character who isn’t immediately attractive to men but who is a romantic interest, or for a monstrous
female character who doesn’t have giant breasts and is also a heroic character? That might be beyond
Hollywood’s comprehension.

Female monsters, from lady vampires to sexy spirits, tend to be hypersexualized to an almost absurd
degree. Take Dracula’s wives in any adaptation of the classic story but especially in the Francis Ford
Coppola film. They’re always half-dressed and leer at Jonathan Harker, using their feminine wiles to
turn him away from the pure, human Mina. Even Lucy, who has already pushing the boundaries of
acceptable female behavior before her vampiric turn (and which is probably why she was chosen to be
tortured by Dracula), becomes hypersexualized following her death and subsequent resurrection.

The trend of the female monster began with Greek and Romand legend, where female monsters were
either temptresses or vile beasts stripped of any sympathy. Consider the legend of Medusa, the original
monster girl. She was turned into a Gorgon by Athena after the goddess witnessed her rape at the hands
of Poseidon and was enraged that such an act happened in her own temple. This is not a warning gift to
protect Medusa, but a punishment; the act of making her so hideous that her face would turn men to
stone. What’s worse is that Perseus in Ovid’s retellings of the myth states that it was a well-earned
punishment. Monstrous women are not allowed a modicum of sympathy, even with tragic backstories.

In the modern era, with some progressive steps made in Hollywood, you would think that the portrayal
of monstrous women onscreen might change. But the sad truth is that we can barely get heroines who
aren’t slender, white, conventionally attractive women; they still usually fit in the mold of being pure
and chaste, and behavior otherwise is relegated to supporting characters who are treated as comic relief
or women who need to be taught a lesson. Women can be temptresses and heroic now, as we’ve seen
with Natasha Romanoff, but her sexuality is punished and treated as monstrous by director Joss
Whedon. As I said above, Hollywood is barely starting to shatter molds for female characters as it is.
For a woman to be the beast in a romance, Hollywood would have to accept that looks aren’t always
everything.
Even the modern somewhat monstrosities of female robots tend to be sexualized. Droids in the Star
Wars universe never talked about sex until L3 in Solo: A Star Wars Story identified as female. Female
robots oftentimes have breastplates to give them exaggerated cleavage, or are just plain sexbots. It’s
horrifying to consider the fact that every single female-identifying character has to, in some way, be
seen as attractive to men. Are men incapable of viewing a female character without the lens of wanting
to sleep with her? Not exactly, according to responses to the new She-Ra design.

The problem is is that the automatic social response to women deviating from norms is a punishment or
shaming. While Hollywood is making progress, they still adhere to mostly conservative norms when it
comes to depicting women onscreen. A happy ending for a woman usually consists of monogamy, the
possibility of children and a white picket fence; while there are certainly exceptions to the rule, this
tends to be the trend. If Hollywood cannot see beyond being enamored with this particular narrative for
women, we will never see a woman as a sympathetic monster.

We need female monsters for simple diversity of characters. We need to explore women undefined by
physical appearance and see them as complex creatures. Be they romantic leads, heroic characters, or
even non-sexualized villains, it would be a step forward for progress as they are starting to break away
from a purely male gaze. Women do not exist to be visually pleasing for men. It’s time Hollywood and
the narrative learned that, and give us the monster girls who aren’t just sexualized creatures but fully
fleshed out characters who aren’t necessarily gorgeous.

https://www.themarysue.com/female-monsters-in-film-tv/
18/07/2018