Edgy Feminism and its Fascination with the Grotesque

my girls and I bring a weird, really off-putting, repulsive vibe to the function.

It’s not ‘bubblegum pink’ or rose petals, it’s a flesh eating labyrinth with jagged teeth.

So frequently internet culture gives us new formations of micro-communities to embrace unconventional aesthetics. Alt-girls, goblin-core, sexy catholic guilt-core, messy-girls, English frazzled lady-core, deranged bacchanalia priestess-core.

Online spaces such as on Instagram and TikTok allow young women in particular to celebrate some strange and sometimes abruptly weird transformations, and not only that but to find like-minded people who make the very community, whether it be through self-proclaimed cult-followings of ‘femcel bloggers’ sharing insider jokes and references, creating and sharing the girls who get it get it posts, discussing body horror films and literature or creating unsettling visual art; they create a belonging and shared identity that is supposedly sheltered from mainstream male-gaze.

The edgy girls online:

It would also seem that these communities are largely reactionary. Replacing clean girl-core, is messy girl-core, for instance, and when the French-chic, Alana Champion, Chloë Sevigny aesthetic was too mainstream and not weird enough, it was toppled by repulsive girl-core.

An example of fashion trends in perfume pierced by the grotesque, in the order of arrival on my TikTok page:

“If you are obsessed with the clean girl aesthetic like me and want to smell like the ultimate fresh, airy, elegant, effortless clean girl, you need to embody the essence of clean laundry and, like, a vanilla-ry bubblebath,” (Lists soft, powdery, rose perfumes from your local Sephora).

(some weeks later)

*To the tune of Discobitch, Ke$ha, Maneskin, or Olivia Rodrigo screaming*

“Forget clean girl aesthetic, I want messy girl maneater who will break your heart in an instant.” (Lists smoky, oud, leather perfumes from popular online brands).

(some weeks later)

*To Mozart’s Lacrimosa Requiem or similar*

“the most repulsive perfumes in the world to scare people off. TOXIC. STINKY. MINERAL. INDUSTRIAL.UNISEX." (Lists, and I quote, “bloody and animalic feels sticky and sweaty”, “iodine, blood and gunpowder", “smells [like] burning woods and roasting flesh”. I don’t know where to buy these but you can find the videos I’m referencing here and here.)

At almost 13 Million views:

@narikaysreserved only for the craziest. #fragrancetiktok #fragrancetok #sgtiktok #fyp

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And not alone:

@htmlcalesilent hill 2 babyyyyy! #horrorgame #horrorgameaesthetic #perfume #perfumetiktok #silenthill #silenthill2

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It’s a niche example, but what is the collective movement of weird girls reactionary to? On one hand, the weird girl aesthetics constantly strive for female empowerment no matter the logical or mainstream desirability behind it, embracing and experimenting with for example, eerie and surreal makeup with bodily oddities, refusing conformity.

Talented SFX artist @paigecolemakeup on Instagram. She films GRWM style vlogs on TikTok, often not mentioning the elephant in the room.

On the other, the feminist interest in the grotesque reacts and repels eco-feminism and the traditional association of women with soft, natural femininity, exploring gender identity, power, and agency in a relentlessly modern way that refuses to become palatable for mainstream decoding. Even through Instagram memes: gone from my page are the posts about pear shaped fertile hips and ovulation phase skin and hair glow, now all I see is wolf/demon ovulation and banshee/Midsommar scream menstruating memes.

But the girls’ interest in the grotesque, the macabre and subversive themes in art and media are not new; one only has to look at gothic literature to realise this.

Because Eco-Feminism is out:

During the Romanticism movement in the Victorian era, cultural representation of women focused on the maternal, Mother-Earth, fair-maiden archetypes.

Take, for instance, Laura Fairlie in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859), who plays into the ‘angel in the house’ archetype almost all the way. Central to her characterisation is her passivity, physical and emotional frailty and vulnerability; she conforms to the expectations of women to be nurturing, uncorrupted and unbothered in contrast to the agency denied to other women, such as her half-sister Marian Halcombe. Unsurprisingly, critics call her “pathetic”, and “comically boring”, whereas Marian is praised as “so loveable".

Or, the seminal beauty Laura from Petrarch’s sonnets. In Sonnet 190 her gentle femininity transforms her into “a white doe […] with two golden horns […] so sweet and proud […] sweet[ening] his trouble with delight" :

A white doe on the green grass appeared to me, with two golden

horns, between two rivers, in the shade of a laurel, when the sun

was rising in an unripe season.

Her look was so sweet and proud that to follow her I left every

task, like the miser who as he seeks treasure sweetens his trouble

with delight.

"Let no one touch me," she bore written with diamonds and

topazes around her lovely neck. "It has pleased my Caesar to

make me free."

And the sun had already turned at midday; my eyes were tired

by looking but not sated, when I fell into the water, and she

disappeared.

from Francesco Petrarch, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, trans. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976)

The Petrachan revival in Romantic Europe only made the ground more fertile for eco-feminism’s philosophical roots. Though it was only formalised in the 20th century, eco-feminism thrived on the Romantics’ desire for the natural world and criticisms of industrialisation, allowing ecofeminists to highlight the link between exploitation of nature and the oppression of women.

For example, in 1818 when a teenage girl called Mary Shelley invents the science fiction genre with Frankenstein, she also makes a powerful commentary on humanity’s impulse to control and destroy nature through Victor’s hubristic attempt to conquer nature with an unnatural creation of life. Again, the female characters like Elizabeth and Justine exist within the domestic sphere associated with healing and preservation of life, in direct contrast to the male ambition of destruction, a key eco-feminist theme followed by modern thinkers such as Vandana Shiva.

But I suggest these associated symbols of purity, beauty and nature conjured first in the male imagination should not be confused with effective feminism, despite Petrarch’s honest deep love for Laura, or Shelley’s feminist intentions. See it inevitably perverted in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Whoso Lyst to Hunt, I Know Where is an Hinde:

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me, hélas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,

Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

As well as I may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written, her fair neck round about:

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

In this imitation of Sonnet 190, Laura, or in this case, Wyatt’s muse/ex-lover Anne Boleyn, pursued by Henry VIII becomes a hunted deer. Whereas Petrarch leaves the deer free to roam, Wyatt only describes his desire to possess and collar the deer. Literally, she becomes a delicate and dumb animal to be hunted, and although the modern feminist reader like you or I (right?) or Shelley for one sympathises with Anne Boleyn in this poem, it does not do enough to actually achieve self-empowered agency- dehumanised she can not even speak to us, instead, we are forced into a passive role, stooping down to read the diamond collar around her neck “Noli me tangere, for Casear’s I am,”. Yes, women are metamorphisised into dehumanised things to be exploited and oppressed. But what can we do now?

The Grotesque sinking its fangs and biting back:

It seems the answer is not a reversal of metamorphosis, but another metamorphosis, this time grotesque.

With the rise of the grotesque in gothic and post modern literature comes the macabre, the uncanny, the abject. Here is the first vampire, Carmilla (1872), beautiful yet haunting, subverting traditional ideas of physical frailty and nurturing, perverted with homosexual promiscuity. Rebecca (1938), the ghost of Manderley commands an oppressive atmosphere of dread and dead, du Maurier gives so much agency she creates female villains who toy with sexual promiscuity, violence, fear, and domination. The Bloody Chamber (1979) is nothing short of the continued tradition of feminist gothic, emphasising bodily horror, eroticised violence and complex female agency in retold fairy tails such as The Company of Wolves (Little Red Riding Hood).

In contemporary 21st century literature and media: a cult favourite in my girls’ school, Carmen Maria Machado’s The Husband Stitch from Her Body and Other Parties (2017), which tells the urban legend of a woman with a ribbon tied around her neck, keeping her otherwise severed head on top. In contrast to eco-feminist fiction, Machado uses the female physical body as a site of horror, exposing the ways in which male-led destruction and control has objectified or disfigured.

Another cult favourite, My Year of Rest and… oh you know it~. Yes, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation from 2018. A pioneer of the messy girl-core, the female protagonist’s psychological and aesthetic decay and self-harm neglects her body (and her mind) as a site of natural beauty or healing, and refuses to conform to the pressures of perfection in a capitalist society.

Cinephiles, have you watched Titane (2021)? Titane is Julia Ducournau’s third film, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2021 making her the first female director to win the award solo. For my non-freaks, the film follows female protagonist Alexia, this punk, promiscuous, messy-girl with a metal plate in her head who goes through more grotesque metamorphosis. For instance, a crazy pregnancy after she has sex (idk) with a car, and also a fire engine (idk). She leaks motor oil from her vagina, and later when she disguises herself as a boy, tapes down her breasts, pregnant bump, and breaks her own nose. The inseparable bodily metamorphosis and fractured mental psyche (she kills, deludes, begs) becomes a metaphor for gender nonconformity and identity and the trauma of bodily horror. She cites Mary Shelley as an inspiration, embracing the "Gothic Horror Heroinism” category. Let Julia Kristeva have a field day with Titane.

Grotesque Empowerment:

These works continue the Gothic evolution of female representation into the modern era, embracing the grotesque- the repulsive and therefore untouched source of female agency, withheld from male dominance and gaze. In a way it becomes almost sacred to women; girls know the importance of a velvet choker or Ottessa Moshfegh on the coffee table. I haven’t even mentioned feminine rage. The screams! The screams! It allows women to be imperfect, chaotic, passionate, powerful, and most of all, human. It gives depth to the otherwise 2D eco-feminist caregiver. Certainly there is a modern fear of the trad-wife, prompting girls and young women to act out, lash out, against the margins and patriarchal constraints imagine the most preposterously twisted and unladylike horror that can be summoned from within the independent mind, to prove, I exist without you, whether you get it or not, within the divinity of the feminine, light balanced and co-existing with the deep darkness.

The Weird, Relentless, Piercing Male-Gaze (TW):

But we have not yet reached emancipation.

1. Even as female creators and female consumers create and engage with the grotesque, they do so within a cultural landscape that has long been male-dominated. Take for instance, horror video games, movies, Stephen King, Patrick Bateman (Hey, did you know that American Psycho was directed by a woman?). When women try to embrace and celebrate the grotesque, often it can lead to unintentional conformity to certain tropes or expectations fetishised by men, such as female suffering or extreme promiscuity.

As it goes, there are some men who would fuck anything with a hole in it. The real grotesque? In 2022 4 men filmed and gang-raped an endangered monitor lizard, killed it, and then ate it. That same year another man raped and killed a pregnant goat. In 2021 an American by the name of Damon Cervantes raped a child, a dog, and a “recently deceased or heavily sedated deer”. Female bodies, abject or not, are still female bodies and thus can always be objectified. The grotesque female body can still be used for voyeuristic consumption; it invokes spectacle that might undermine its alienating intentions.

2. There is also the trust we put into female creators to package the grotesque in a particular way. Online spaces like Instagram and TikTok have become stepping stones to porn sites like OnlyFans, where some female content creators market themselves as grotesque to appeal to male viewers and commodify their transgressiveness to an unknowingly less feminist audience (including young women and girls). As any radical feminist will tell you, diluting feminist intentions or selling your female body out to the male-gaze only reinforces that male-gaze as a part of the narrative and spectacle. You can not turn yourself into a commodity and then turn around and say that women are not objects to be controlled by the patriarch.

3. And on that note, as the grotesque gains popularity online, its risk of commercialisation does too. Under capitalism radical and intellectual approaches to the grotesque can be very easily and quickly commodified, turning tropes into a consumable aesthetic that appeals to male or female fantasises.

   

4. Some female creators may and are unintentionally internalising the male-gaze, even in their exploration and willingness to engage in the grotesque. Do you really need an expensive, niche perfume that reeks of iodine and gunmetal to grant you your agency and independence? Or do you need everyone else in the room to smell it on you, to give you that alienation/independence? Like the dark feminine fae in La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819) by John Keats, or the Ancient Greek sirens, romanticising the monstrous female body can appeal to male desires for deviance, and can perpetuate the idea of a woman’s female power solely existing to entice or seduce men.

5. Depending on its execution and sensitive to reception, interpretations can always weaken the intention. If we call it mere shock value, then the empowering depictions of female complexity are just lost.

6. Not every woman identifies with the grotesque, or this dark femininity, hence, micro-communities. If this is a reactionary movement that seeks to replace another set of ideals (soft femininity), we risk and limit the multiplicity and diversity of female experiences and expressions, unintentionally reverting back to a 2D design of womanhood. For some women, eco-feminism and soft femininity still represents a meaningful symbol of their identity.

Conclusions:

For the grotesque to survive in the feminist realm safely, it must remain committed to subverting expectations rather than replicating them or entirely replacing them. Most of all it must emphasises female autonomy over how the body is presented and perceived, though this is easier said than done. To be effective, it must be informed by diverse feminist perspectives and experiences, from race, class, and sexualities, rather than appealing only to the white, middle-class heteronormative experience.

The grotesque must reject the male gaze, address a distinctly female gaze and prioritise the articulation of female subjectivity rather than the spectacle for outside consumption that may inevitably follow.

Will this shift continue to grow? I don’t know. On the one hand, like I’ve said, the female fascination into the grotesque, or, weird girls, are nothing new, surviving centuries, and across the world. However, since these new micro-communities are emerging on online spaces perverted by consumerism, fast-fashion, and the male-gaze as young women film and post themselves on sites made for entertainment and money, it might be hard to afford much intellectual depth to these phases of commercial femininity. Still, I would be lying if 2014 Tumblr feminine grunge wasn’t still ingrained in my mind. If this shift does continue to grow, how will it reshape gender norms and cultural expectations of gender? What has dark femininity and the femme fatale turned into? Male skepticism of gold diggers and heartless whores only fuels male violence and perpetuates the old stereotype of untrustworthy, deviant women. Maybe some young women think, it is better to be feared than to fear, but we already know all too well the reality of our female fears. Maybe that’s why the fictional grotesque isn’t so scary, comforting like a murder documentary before bed. The worst is not hard to imagine.

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