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Julia Oldham’s ‘She-Wolves’ Get Their Moment in the Moonlight

Julia Oldham’s ‘She-Wolves’ Get Their Moment in the Moonlight

Sweating over a sexy vampire? Chances are your fanged crush could be either male or female. But If meat-flavored drool and excessive body hair are more your thing, you’re probably lusting after a bonafide wolfman. Emphasis on man.

“The horror trope of the werewolf in movies and literature has been overwhelmingly masculine,” says multi-disciplinary artist Julia Oldham, whose photographic series She-Wolves examines the genre’s gender imbalance. While the Oregon and NYC-based artist notes the recent rise of female werewolves in pop culture—think Katharine Isabelle’s death-obsessed high schooler in Ginger Snaps or Angela Carter’s beautiful and bawdy stories from The Bloody Chamber—her work pushes the idea to extremes, refusing to objectify its subject matter in exchange for audience hoots and howls.

‘Bathing Werewolf’

“She-Wolves reflect the discomfort of being something that society doesn’t expect them to be,” says Oldham, who created the series in 2017 by digitally manipulating her photographic self-portraits. She adds: “They are awkward and self-conscious.” They’re also covered in body hair, and blessed with at least one too many breasts for a human woman to comfortably wear a bra. As Oldham says, she likes to “pervert expectations” when it comes to portraying the so-called fairer sex.

Borrowing liberally from Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ iconic Women Who Run With Wolves, Oldham bites back at the idea of controlled feminine ideals, replacing them with radical self-acceptance and humorous vulnerability.


New Book By Katie Love

From Cult To Comedy, A Memoir, by Katie Love

Author Katie Love: The Comedian Turning Heartbreak Into Humor [Podcast] coverThe year is 1970. The horror soap opera “Dark Shadows” is all the rage, the Vietnam War is raging and nine-year-old Katie, an imaginative and independent latch-key kid, comes home from school to discover her mother’s suicide.

Taken in by her older sister who has recently become a Jehovah’s Witness, Katie is shown an illustration from a bible picture book featuring wild animals peacefully lounging by a pool of water, surrounded by happy people picking fruit. An enticing offer is made: “Katie, this is Paradise. Do you want to see Mom again, happy and living forever? All you have to do is follow all of Jehovah’s commandments and you can be with Mom again.”

Mom happy and living forever? Two tickets to Paradise, please!

So begins Katie’s zealous quest to attain perfection and entrance into a utopian world which promises peace, love, and happiness. She discovers a much darker world. “Two Tickets to Paradise, from Cult to Comedy” tells the hilarious and heartbreaking story of an earnest, bible-toting kid intent on saving the world, and follows her metamorphosis into a boisterous comedian intent on saving herself through the healing powers of humor.

 

“She-Wolves reflect the discomfort of being something that society doesn’t expect them to be.” — Julia Oldham

She-Wolves

Julia Oldham’s photographic series She-Wolves examines the horror genre’s gender imbalance.
‘Werewolf Under Starlight’
Julia Oldham’s photographic series She-Wolves examines the horror genre’s gender imbalance.
‘Shift’
Julia Oldham’s photographic series She-Wolves examines the horror genre’s gender imbalance.
‘Werewolf in Wildflowers’
Julia Oldham’s photographic series She-Wolves examines the horror genre’s gender imbalance.
‘Werewolf in a Field of Poppies’
‘Temple’
‘The Lost Cabin’
Werewolf at Twilight’
‘Werewolf at Night’
‘Werewolf in Winter’

Julia Oldham: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Purchase Work

Want to be featured in Lightbox? Email editor@notrealart.com with a short introduction and a link to your online portfolio.

Morgan  Laurens 

Morgan Laurens (she/her/hers) is NOT REAL ART’s editor in chief. Morgan is an arts writer from the Midwest who enjoys saying “excuse me” when no actual pardon is needed. She specializes in grant writing and narrative-based storytelling for mission-driven artists and arts organizations. With a background in printmaking, pop culture, and classic literature, Morgan believes a girl’s best friend is the pile of books on her bedside table.

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