a few years ago when I wrote my review for The Curse of the Werewolf: Fantasy, Horror, and the Beast Within I stated that "claims of a wolf-woman are optimistic under the patriarchy" and I only used the term wolf-woman "with great apprehension." this apprehension came from spending a moderate amount of time reading about/watching werewolf movies and then trying specifically to find instances of female werewolves in media. human-to-wolf transformations, and really all animal transformations, are largely the province of women in witchcraft and folklore studies. while men were thought to transform into wolves, too, and there are even famous male werewolves from history (Jean Grenier being a good example), men were often the exception. however, moving into the 18th and 19th centuries the werewolf became more closely associated with violent male fetishes and sexual practices such as rape, sexually-motivated murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia. Baring-Gould and Summers, two major authors around this time, began to cement this perspective. then despite the fact that several of the earliest werewolf movies and stories of the 20th century focus on werewolves as either Indigenous people, metaphors for Indigenous people, and specifically Indigenous women (The Werewolf, 1913, RIP), the creature very quickly became a white man's affliction. basically, a werewolf began to represent the white man's bestial nature which was awoken or triggered by contacts with sexuality or non-white cultures. as this metaphor for repression snowballed, science occasionally got involved as a force that could man in touch with his inner wolf. despite a long folk history in Europe and the UK, werewolves in American media now still often represent the uneasy relationship between colonizer and colonized, but are specifically sympathetic avatars for the white American male to unrepress in the worst possible way.

basically, there are not a lot of female werewolves. Google female werewolves in movies and you'll find on lists, for example, "unnamed woman in one scene of Dog Soldiers" and so on. I haven't read as many books with werewolves, and I'm willing to bet that with the availability of fan fiction, fantasy erotica, and other anti-capitalist genres there is a wealth of representation. but still, it's clear that mainstream resistance to showing a woman-to-wolf transformation is due to nothing other than men finding women's body hair disgusting. the 1944 movie Cry of the Werewolf is a good case in point. it came at a time when other werewolf movies were incredibly experimental and innovative about showing detailed and grotesque man-to-wolf transformations. however, the central female werewolf in Cry of the Werewolf transforms off-screen and entirely into a wolf, so that a wolf running around is all we see of her. there is no half-woman half-wolf monstrosity creeping around tearing out throats; there is just the sexual woman and the uncomplicated wolf.

try to find essays, articles, or books about it and you'll be out of luck, but it's unmistakable: men are as vigilant and aggressive as ever about policing women's body hair. I'm sure it varies by culture, but my guess is that in a majority of cultures women are expected to shave. if you don't think this is sickening I'm not going to be the one to convince you; I'm just not that persuasive. but if you are already disturbed by the de-animalization and body modification that men subject women to then the case of the wolf-woman will doubtless be familiar to you.

all this to say, Nightbitch begins with the mother (who is not named but who quickly adopts the Nightbitch moniker) experiencing hair growth that soon accelerates. along with body hair growth (or is it just regrowth?) Nightbitch also experiences a host of other dog-like shifts, some physical and some psychological. ultimately, Yoder creates a beautiful, outrageously engaging protagonist who explores the animal inside that we've locked away. she does so without losing any of the sexuality of the animal (or the woman) but also without catering to male ideas of feminine sexiness or libido. Yoder's choice to use a stream-of-consciousness narrative style is risky but it pays off. it feels like a glimpse into raw interiority for a character who is experiencing fragile connections between instinct and intellect and trying to foster them. there are dozens of other strengths, like the respect for folklore as an often-dismissed discipline that has great potential for feminism or the initial two-dimensionality of Nightbitch's relationships eventually expanding into careful characterizations. there is also, importantly, plenty of wonderful attention paid to the realities of maybe turning into a dog. Yoder is full of big, exciting ideas. but most significant to me, and the reason this is five stars, is that by the end of Nightbitch's journey of self-transformation she is that fascinating, sexual, proud, feminine creature so long denied us: she is canid, and she is covered in hair.