ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how, at a surface level, horror films engage with and enforce a dualistic socio-cultural construction of heteronormative female sexuality, and assumptions about sexual difference, in a largely uncritical manner. It explains the ways that the becomings inherent in the configurations of monstrosity offer a more provocative, proactive way of thinking through expressions of female sexuality. Within the popular, violent and abject space of the horror genre, myths about virginity are informed by, and in turn contribute to, normative and often very restrictive binary representations of heterosexual sexuality and femininity that deny a breadth of sexual expressions and identities. Vagina dentata is a primal and ancient construct of femininity. While Teeth is a serious engagement with female sexual autonomy, it is presented in a knowing and tongue-in-cheek manner that lightens some of the more horrific aspects of its content.
