“Snatch, Eat, Erase”: The Demonization of Women’s (Sexual) Appetite Through Eating Disorders in the CW TV Series The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017)

Abstract

Ever since the Victorian period, eating disorders have been influenced by patriarchal discourses that monitor women’s bodies. Female vampires in Victorian Gothic narratives—e.g., Dracula (1897) and Carmilla (1872)—transitioned from a restrained, anorexic body to an insatiable, voluptuous one. Contemporary vampire teen dramas—including the Twilight saga (2005–2008), or the TV series The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017) and Vampire Academy (2022)—are also a reflection of their socio-cultural time of production, thus featuring dubious and postfeminist representations of female hunger and eating disorders that mirror our post-postmodern gender and identity politics. In this article, I examine how the transformation of the female protagonists in The Vampire Diaries from slender, proper girls to voracious vampires could be understood as a patriarchal demonisation of women’s (sexual) appetite, particularly in the case of Vicki Donovan and Elena Gilbert, but also as a source of empowerment for Caroline Forbes.