By Denise Noe
I Was A Teenage Werewolf is a title that grabs. Many stay up late to watch the old movie expecting something funny and special and are disappointed to see a run-of-the-mill horror flick.
Yet the kinky title conveys a deep truth. “A Teenage Werewolf” is almost an oxymoron for a werewolf symbolizes the sudden, bizarre transformations, both physical and psychological, of adolescence.
But whose adolescence?
The boy’s? During puberty a boy finds his face suddenly growing hair, his impulses turning sexual and aggressive. “Wolf” is an old-fashioned slang term for a horny male. The Big Bad Wolf out to get Little Red Riding Hood is quite obviously a man attempting to deceive or even rape a young girl out of her virginity.
(Interestingly, in the earliest versions of the legend Little Red Riding Hood lost — she was eaten by the wolf. In the version that has come down to us, the girl and grandmother are rescued by a good man and the bad wolf/man gets his comeuppance.)
Lord Byron wrote, “Lycanthropy I can comprehend for, without transformation, men turn into wolves on many an occasion.” It seems likely that the word men is used in the sex-specific rather than generic sense.
The werewolf legend, though, has a distinctly feminine aspect to it. The strongest clue to a female werewolf is that the transformation occurs once a month, when the moon is full.
There are others. A girl turning into a woman finds her pubis and armpits sprouting hair. Indeed, puberty often finds a girl with facial hair but, unlike her brother who looks anxiously and hopefully for signs of a beard, she is horrified by a downy mustache or hint of chin whiskers — she fears she is turning into a monster.
Finally, it is the young girl whose sexuality is apt to leave her with a guilty secret in her belly.
After tallying up the evidence, I find myself quite perplexed so I will leave it to the reader to sex the werewolf: Is it a boy or a girl?
Previously published in HICK
