‘When I lose my virginity, I want to be on my period’: Kink, Abjection, and Female Adolescent Sexuality in Contemporary Cinema

Abstract

In contemporary cinema, the adolescent female has gone beyond gaining sexual identity and agency through awkward sexual encounters or fleeting moments of innocence lost; instead, recent films depict female characters who establish sexual autonomy through infatuations with bodily fluids, subverting and—according to some critics—perverting typical representations of female rites of passage. These controversial anti-heroines can be viewed as advocates for change who argue that this unapologetic sexual behaviour is commonplace, thus revealing female adolescent kink and sex play as both a defiance of oppressive gender ideologies and a natural part of sexual maturation. Drawing from Julia Kristeva’s and Barbra Creed’s discussions of the abject and the monstrous-feminine as well as Sarah Arnold’s and Kier-La Janisse’s recent innovative works about cinematic portrayals of matriarchy and female neuroses, this chapter examines how menstrual blood, bodily fluids, and masturbation are presented as agents of sexual empowerment for adolescent characters as well as for viewers. Additionally, transgressive cinema’s and the alt-porn movement’s controversial roles in provoking the need and space for feminist activism via cinema is explored.