Exploring Transfemininity in the Big Bad Wolf
by Gabi Kelly
“The monster, by necessity, must be anything but human—
cast in all the ugly things found in normative society:
sexually dominant women, effeminate men, and trans
people who sculpt bodies at their own whim. If to be queer
is to reject the norm, and a monster is what is not the
norm, then to be queer is to be a freak, a monster.“
The first transfeminine representation I ever encountered was the “Big Bad Wolf” from Little Red Riding Hood. She made passing look easy, fooling Little Red into thinking she was the girl’s grandma. Of course, lines like “My, what big teeth you have” underscore that the Big Bad Wolf is safely clockable to the reader. It’s also lines like these that build the little “joke” of the story—wanting to eat Little Red, making her get into bed. Overt and covert metaphors
build a theme of sex and sexual assault over the ages. The purest form of transmisogyny: the child predator delivered by 200-year-old French texts. To cap it all off, one of the oldest versions of the story features the young girl (not quite Little Red Riding Hood yet)slipping out of the wolf’s grasp and running to her mother. There, the young girl and her family lay a trap by laying a single white sheet across a river. The wolf runs across “the bridge,” only to have it collapse underneath her weight and drown. The young girl and her family celebrate the wolf’s death—they managed to protect their sisterhood, after all.
My own personal philosophy on the queer experience views queerness as a means to reject assumed norms of love, gender, and sex—particularly if those norms are harmful—and to assert myself against society. While I can’t speak to other groups (cis lesbians, gay men, trans men, etc.), there is much of my own transfemininity to be found in these monsters. The heroes of the monsters’ stories demonstrate their humanity in oh-so-very-typical ways (being white, Anglo, straight men in the USA), and one of the best is a safe, secure, heterosexual love. The monster, by necessity, must be anything but human—cast in all the ugly things found in normative society: sexually dominant women, effeminate men, and trans people who sculpt bodies at their own whim. If to be queer is to reject the norm, and a monster is what is not the norm, then to be queer is to be a freak, a monster. Sometimes this queerness is coded, like Hades in Hercules, or explicit, like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. Sometimes they are accidental heroes; sometimes they are absolute monsters. It matters not—to be queer is to be monstrous.
Same, too, with the Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Admittedly, I didn’t really think about her until more recently. I mulled casual interest in wolves and fairy tales over and over again, and once I reached the conclusion, it’s shockingly obvious in retrospect. Monstrosity itself is an easy metaphor for oppression, in spite of—or because of—all the messy readings it brings. In the transfeminine line of criticism, or at least what little exists, it’s an age-old tradition. In “My Words to Victor Frankenstein” (1994), Susan Stryker weaves a connection between the constructed nature of herself and her transfemininity and Mary Shelley’s monster: “With one voice, her monster and I answer… without debasing ourselves, for we have done the hard work of constituting ourselves on our own terms, against the natural order.”
As Susan found refuge in Frankenstein, I’ve found my own refuge in the Big Bad Wolf, particularly in werewolf myths—a creature both hated and rejected by modern society and connected with violence, often sexual violence. The sometimes deliberately crafted human form to pass in society is a necessary act of survival; otherwise, she could be easily hunted down. Yet, it’s not her true form—the wolf is. It must be uncomfortable posing as a human; one little slip, and someone might see your “great big teeth.” And when the wolf shows its body, it’s rejected for its uniquely wolfish qualities—long, knotted fur, limbs and hands too big to be a lady’s. How dare these people reject such beauty! Not to mention, I always pitied the Big Bad Wolf, for she is just another, albeit grotesque, prop—a trans woman whose actions were transformed into a grand moral lesson. And not to mention, a fictional character. Why should I care if she is wrong or right? I’ll rip her up, throw away the ugly bits—the predatory stereotype, the easy-to-clock “disguises”—and stitch together a quilt out of her beauty. That’s what I want from a monster.
In these stories, we cannot be the heroes, so it’s far better to alter the monsters to our own needs. Cut up all the parts we don’t want, but turn and mold the bits we do. Halloween, too, can be a time to embrace that queerness—transforming the “funny” gender bend dress-up into something more substantial, with playful, gaudy outfits to put drag queens and kings to shame. It can also be a time to fit in—but let’s be a bit more monstrous, shall we?
I’d be remiss not to mention other oppressions that find refuge in the monster (particularly racial), but in my own limited (relatively able-bodied, white Latina) experiences, I’ve always found it is my queerness that connects the best. All societies have their monsters, and all societies have their queers. Queerness is not a
static thing but, like monsters, changes and transforms from era to era—the inhuman adjusted to its time and place in the world. I think it is wise to be like a monster, so I won’t ask forgiveness for being a little more wolfish in my life (at least to my own choosing).