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Why Sapphic Love Bites: Untangling Cannibalism's Sex Appeal in Yellowjackets

I've been on a huge Yellowjackets kick recently, and it got me thinking about Cannibalism. Cannibalism is used as a metaphor for all consuming love. You love someone so much that you'd eat them up, lick their bones clean, and drink their blood until the only thing that remained of them was the memory of their skin on your teeth. Why do you think people drink the blood of Christ or eat his "body" during Mass or Communion? They want to be close to him in the nearest way possible. So, given my affinity for sapphic romance and thirst for knowledge about cannibalism in media, I did the most logical thing, and wrote about it. As always, links provided are my research. Happy reading! https://doi.org/10.2307/26167982 http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/feb/14/yellowjackets-season-three-review-this-teen-cannibal-drama-just-remembered-how-to-be-funny http://medium.com/@gnawedinlove/feasting-on-love-a-study-of-cannibalism-as-a-metaphor-9f3831f33467 https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2024.2416175 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/horror-and-hormones-grief-and-gore-in-yellowjackets

Yellowjackets' pilot is a punch to the gut, an opening into a desolate world of feral, bloodied teenage girls devouring human flesh. It's a shocking hook, certainly, but it's also a good premise for entering into one of the most fascinating and unsettling trends in contemporary storytelling: the conflation of cannibalism and lesbian desire. This is not cheap thrills; this is a phenomenon that deserves closer examination. Why, then, this particular Venn diagram – where the most heinous taboo, cannibalism, overlaps with the narrative of female same-sex desire – so resonating?

Yellowjackets, watched by Doreen St. Félix of The New Yorker, draws on a potent mix of "horror and hormones, grief and gore" (Félix). But beyond the initial gut punch, the show resonates on a deeper cultural level. Cannibalism here is not simply a twist of plot; it's a metaphor. It's about a desire for a complete, almost destructive, erasing of boundaries. This is the intensity and possessiveness that can characterize any romantic relationship, but it's added to when those relationships are off the mainstream. Consumption, in this twisted context, is a gesture of self-expression of a hunger for a union so profound it becomes metaphysical, transgressing the classical boundaries of intimacy.

Subversion of classical femininity is one of the characteristic features of this phenomenon, as identified by research in Feminist Media Studies. (Miller et al, 2024) Alyson Miller and her co-authors observe that the statement, "Those girls are vicious little monsters," encapsulates this subversion. Cannibalism as an act of defiance against passivity, against the stripping away of agency by the outside world. In a cruel, ungoverned world, these women are forced to develop their own social code, their own rules for living. Eating each other is an act of taking power, a means of exercising power on the world that has taken it away from them. It's a transgressive act that rearranges their subjectivities on their own terms. Fei (2024) writes on Medium, "Cannibalism becomes a way of consuming and becoming one with the other, blurring the lines between self and other in a way that is consistent with the extremity of romantic love." This "blurring of boundaries" is the secret to the trope's power. It is a sign of transgression of social norms and of an openness to living a less fixed, less defined sense of self and desire.

It would be easy to dismiss this trend as shock value. And, as Rebecca Nicholson implies in The Guardian, Yellowjackets certainly has a dark sense of humour (Nicholson, 2025). But that is not enough of an explanation. The cannibalism in these tales is more than that. It is a dark reflection of desperation, trauma, and the breakdown of societal norms. The Yellowjackets' characters, driven to desperation by their circumstance, confront their worst selves. The wilderness is a melting pot in which civilization's rules no longer apply, and hunger, lust, and brutality become dangerously intertwined.

JSTOR's "Lessons Learned from YellowJackets" (2025) identifies the influence of trauma on the behaviour of the characters. Cannibalism as a collective trauma, a means to cope with unspeakable horror. It is a shared experience which unites them in something distinctive and irrecoverable, something born of blood and sorrow. The descent into the abyss provides the environment wherein sexual and moral categories are reversed and allow for the experience of desire and relationship which would otherwise be submerged or repressed.

In addition, the crossing of cannibalism and sapphic desire also offers a compelling metaphor for exploring social anxieties about female sexuality and power. Women who want women exist on the margins of a heteronormative society, and the taboo nature of cannibalism can be seen as an exaggeration of this "otherness." These tales allow us to explore how female sexual desire, particularly when it is nonnormative, can be read as monstrous or deviant.

Lastly, Yellowjackets and productions like it that employ this trope are not simply wallowing in the grotesque. They are sorting through a thick web of cultural fascinations and fears. They force us to think about uncomfortable truths about female desire, power, survival, and the very definition of what is "normal." This movement is appealing because it is venturing into forbidden space, exploring spaces that repel and fascinate us. It challenges us to think about our own biases and prejudices about women's sexuality and how far human beings will go to connect, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

#journalism #film #writing #writers craft #sophie thatcher #yellowjackets #cannibalistic #sapphic #sapphic love #wlw #love #love language #connection #tv shows #television

In my writer's craft high school course, I only ever seem to be capable of writing things based on my own life stressors. Whether it's poetry, script writing, etc. It always ends up coming back to my personal stressors. Like thinking about my age, or trying to cope with leaving high school. I made a few poems not about my personal issues, but those were few and far between. So I always just write about what I understand. And shockingly, my teacher always praises my work. I'm always shocked by that. Because I never feel like a good enough writer. I always feel like my dialogue is stilted and unnatural, that my descriptions are lackluster and vague, that just everything I do is subpar.

Also, it bugs me that I never seem capable of writing stories unless they're about my personal struggles. I can make up all sorts of ideas for books, tv shows, games, etc. But when it comes time to transfer those concepts into something on a larger scale? I can't do it. I've never been able to do it. For all I know, I may never be able to. I hate knowing that, but I know it's also probably true. I just...i'm an ideas person, and that's all i ever am. sigh...