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Female cannibals emerge as a defining trend in feminist horror fiction

Thursday, 18 June 2026, 06:40 · 1 min read

A wave of horror novels featuring female cannibals is reshaping the genre, with authors using graphic, visceral narratives to explore feminist rage, body politics and resistance to patriarchal norms. Works such as Monika Kim's The Eyes are the Best Part (2025), Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger (2021) and Delilah S. Dawson's Bloom (2023) feature women who devour men with relish, using cannibalism as a metaphor for defying expectations of feminine submission and smallness. Scholars argue the trend reflects broader anxieties about bodily autonomy and social control — particularly as pressures to conform to narrow beauty standards intensify amid the rise of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and the retreat of the body positivity movement.

Sources
The ConversationFemale cannibals: what’s behind the emerging horror fiction trend? ↗︎
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