Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact,

a short-form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

Thank you. As we continue our look at the werewolf in myth, legend, and media, we now turn to the female werewolf, a gendered take on the monster that might at first glance seem to be mere titillation, but the roots

of the concept weave their way through a variety of contemplations about femininity and

the wild in all their forms.

I want to return to 2017's She-Wolf, a cultural history of female werewolves, which

features multiple chapters by different authors that examine female werewolves, which features multiple chapters by different authors

that examine female werewolves in myth, legend, and media, everything from centuries-old

legends to modern cartoons. As previously mentioned, the book's editor, Hannah Priest, argues

that European werewolf narratives revolve around the threat posed by wolves to domesticated

animals, ultimately a threat to male-owned agriculture and property. When the werewolf is male,

the threat comes from outside the male landowner's domain, the outlaw wolf wanderer, who might

seek to tear through the defenses and kill livestock or family members. Meanwhile,

female werewolves tend to emerge from within the male landowner's domain, often endangering

children in serving as an overall threat to domesticity. Of note, the first Mexican werewolf

movie, La Loba, or The She-Wolf from 1965, features both a

female and a male werewolf, and they correspond to this form quite perfectly.

The female werewolf, the daughter of a well-to-do Mexican landowner and scientist, and the

male werewolf, her suit her from afar. In this gothic slice of Golden Age Mexican cinema,

the werewolf seems to represent the wild and uncontrollable elements

of someone within the family unit and someone from beyond it.

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