At Home in Horror: Women and Body Horror

While most discussion around the subgenre of body horror focuses on its birthplace of film, the richest iterations come from women writing body horror fiction to explain the experience of womanhood. As body horror focuses on fear of painful or absurd mishap with the body. Women experience pain or absurdity in their own bodies every day with processes like menstruation, pregnancy, puberty, and heightened chances of becoming a victim of sexual assault. Furthermore, women experience society's forceful shaming and fear about natural processes of the body and experiences such as anger and sexual desire. Using this idea as a framework, how can we describe how body horror in literature uniquely encapsulates women's experiences with their bodies and societal oppression? Why do we construct society to make people feel horrified at the female body, including women themselves? How can we deconstruct this narrative and take back our bodies so they are not objects to be feared, but beautiful beings that contain the very unshameful necessities of life?