Monster High’s Draculaura: dealing with daddies and fuckboys

Abstract

ABSTRACTMattel’s tween girl property Monster High is a transmedia project that reworks classic monsters from history and cinema into teenagers attending a high school specifically for monsters. Much of the work about Monster High has focused on its presentation of sexualized femininity whose ‘dolls had a higher number of sexualizing characteristics than Bratz … or Barbie …’ and its ‘taming’ of the monstrous through reinforcing conventional beauty standards, or focusing the presence of particular elements of monstrosity such as hair, femininity, and werewolves. This paper focuses on the teenaged vampire Draculaura and her interactions with other monsters, and what those relationships reveal about the construction of her own monstrosity. Her experience as the assumed prey for vampires – her adopted ‘father’ Count Dracula turned her to save her life, and the emotional abuse of her vampiric ex-boyfriend – have modified her powers and how she ‘feeds’. The violation of self by both father and her beloved is in direct contrast to Draculaura’s own powers, and presents as a conflict between female monstrosity – explicitly transformative, nurturing, and powerful – and the predatory, ultimately self-defeating monstrosity of the male version.