In her introduction, she states “I have tried to make something about women from stories that were always and only about men”. In the films explored here, the writers, directors, and producers reappropriate tropes that exist throughout film and storytelling history in order to rethink the power and position of women and their bodies. In Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, Alice Bolin writes about a trend she observes in American popular culture and media of the brutalization of women. These include the following films: Teeth (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009), We Are What We Are (2013), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), The Witch (2015), and Raw (2016). This paper investigates costuming of women in a selection of horror films from the 21st century and how costume as a tool intensifies a narrative. Women are often marginalized in film, a reflection of a larger social issue that manifests clearly in horror films where they are treated violently and exploitatively. Despite, and probably exactly because of, the historically trivialized nature of both horror as a film genre and fashion, this paper investigates how they intersect, specifically in the case of female characters in the films. Both devices are approachable and digestible in a way that makes them significant. Horror, like fashion, is an underestimated tool for analyzing culture. Keywords: Costume design, women in horror, costume symbolism, feminism in film Ideas of the grotesque and its unquestionable connection to the female sex directly relate to these politics and social ideas, but also to horror storytelling and the mythology of monsters we observe throughout time. How do costumes in these films work with or against the current narrative of women in society? Exploring the film industry in this context is essential given the industry’s tendency to showcase public opinion in subtle or not so subtle ways. This trope is associated with sexuality, whether through the overt use of seduction or sexual organs used as weapons. This article investigates the costuming of women in a selection of horror films from the 21st century and how these costumes express and intensify the narrative by looking at the tropes of female monsters, specifically the maneater. Both subjects are habitually tossed aside as frivolous and senseless, yet, this article argues that both devices are approachable and digestible in a way that makes them significant. Abstract: Horror, like fashion, appears to be an underestimated tool for understanding political and social change.
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