We're not sure if canines not having a menopause is a blessing or a curse in this situation.
Art by ~Kosha Vinka
Shapeshifters often have a hard time of things. So do women who live in a society more focused towards men. Being both can cause no shortage of issues. Often they may be the only female werecreature around, and thus are the focus of lust for any male werecritter around. Of course, being weaker than a male can cause issues all by itself.
This trope includes animal-based shapeshifters other than werewolves. Of course, a possible transformation cycle based on the moon would be on top of having to go through another inconvenient monthly cycle as well.
Art by ~Kosha Vinka
Related to My Species Doth Protest Too Much but with emphasis on the interplay of shapeshifting and gender. Subtrope of Blessed with Suck. Contrast with Cute Monster Girl. See also: Beauty to Beastnote , Gender-Restricted Ability, I Am a Monster, Shapeshifter Identity Crisis note , and Stages of Monster Grief. If Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing is in effect, female werewolves can have a much harder time with being forced to run around naked than a male werewolf.
Reminder: if this problem would be unchanged if she was a man, then that is not this trope. Being female, in some part, led to her problems.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Bad Wolf: Lupita Luka is one of only a handful of known female werewolves, and this leads to a bunch of annoyances. For starters, she frequently has to run around in a skimpy outfit because form-fitting clothing gets in the way of her transformations. Second, being a werewolf gives her some strange appetites. She also suffers blackouts and memory loss that may be related to her transformations, which becomes a problem for her when she is framed for murder and can't entirely account for her whereabouts during that time.
- New Mutants: Wolfsbane's werewolf-like abilities are due to being a mutant rather than a supernatural gift/curse. As such, when a Norse wolf-god bred her the resulting pregnancy seriously endangered her until she got a power upgrade because she did not have the supernatural constitution to handle it. Plus, having been raised a strict Scots-Presbyterian, she would normally have been repulsed by a pagan deity, but her female wolf instincts kicked in.
Fan Works
- In the Discworld/The Big Bang Theory crossover The Many Worlds Interpretation, a creation of A.A. Pessimal, the canonical character of Lucy is (as in the TV show) a slightly-built, nerdy, young girl with crippling social anxiety and shyness. A visiting Discworlder speculates as to whether there is something like a small easily-frightened deer in her genetic ancestry. This is shown to be literally true when, on the Discworld, Lucy is scared to an extent she has never experienced before note , and she literally becomes a small frightened deer. Lucy then has to come to terms with being a weredeer, or perhaps a weregazelle. Among other things, she realises she always comes back naked, and she also has to come to a working arrangement with other were-species, especially Tony the were-leopard and Angua the classic werewolf. note
Films — Animated
- Shrek: Fiona's existence as a princess were-Ogre grants her far less autonomy than Shrek is given. At least at first.
Films — Live-Action
- The Boy Who Cried Werewolf: Downplayed. After Jordan becomes a werewolf, she gains a lot of confidence, athletic ability, and even the ability to see without her glasses. However, she laments that no boy will want a snarling, hairy werewolf for a girlfriend. Her brother, Hunter, insists that he knows several guys who would want to date her.
Literature
- Blood and Chocolate (1997): The female werewolf who wins the 'Bitches Dance' is supposed to become the new Alpha's mate. Vivian already has a human boyfriend and thus doesn't want to do this.
- Discworld:
- Angua's narration often mentions her transformation in the broader context of her being the only woman in the Watch (at least until female dwarfs start openly dressing female) and likening it to Menstrual Menace, but also mentions problems like the nagging feeling she should be wearing three bras.
- Sally the vampire also mentions turning into a cloud of bats is more of a problem for her than for a man since she ends up naked afterwards.
- Lonely Werewolf Girl: a whole family of female werewolves find it impossible to date; one becomes so desperate he starts dating a werewolf hunter.
- Mercy Thompson: While it's perfectly possible for women to become werewolves (and the series features a number of prominent examples, most notably Anna Cornick, the protagonist of the spin off Alpha and Omega), because becoming a werewolf requires having your body ravaged to the point that if you don't turn you die, and the transformation itself is extremely agonising, by nature the vast majority who survive are men. Case in point: Adam Hauptman's pack, and thus the entire Columbia Basin werewolf population (which is considered quite large by their standards), only has three female members. Due to their rarity female werewolves are highly prized, with packs even having been known to go to war to induct them into their membership. They likewise aren't able to hold rank in their own right (regardless of how dominant or powerful they are), being forced to share the status of their mate.
- The Otherworld: Elena is the only female werewolf, due to having been bitten by Clay. Not only did this cause massive problems in her and Clay's romantic relationship, but makes her a target for "mutts," non-Pack werewolves who want to possess the only female werewolf in existence.
- The Twilight Saga: Certain families among the Quileute tribe have werewolves, a trait which has always passed from father to son. The Clearwaters knew that this might one day be an issue for their son, but when their older daughter Leah transformed, it was enough to give her father a heart attack. She's the only female werewolf, though, and why she inherited it remains unexplained.note
Live-Action TV
- Bitten: The whole premise of the show is that the protagonist, Elena Michaels, is the world's only female werewolf. Thus, she is inherently weaker than most any other werewolf. Also, given that the werewolves have no taboo against nudity and she is the only female...
- Discussed in an episode of Night Court (2023), where one of the defendants on the docket is a self-proclaimed female werewolf accused of biting people, who takes offense when the court refuses to accept her defense that she was simply following her lupine instincts. She laments that it's hard enough being recognized as a werewolf by other werewolves, as most of them are men and they apparently have long refused to admit that there are female werewolves as well.
- Joked about in Teen Wolf, even as it seems female werewolves don't actually suffer any additional consequences or stigma from male werewolves. When Peter talks about having bitten Lydia to Stiles, and thus Lydia possibly turning into a werewolf, Stiles notes that once a month she might try and rip his throat out. Peter shrugs and says "Well, since she's a woman. . . twice a month." Later, Derek informs his newly-bitten wolf Erica, on the night of the full moon, "you're going to want to kill anything you can find." Erica quips back "Good thing I had my period last week, then."
Tabletop Games
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse:
- Black Furies are exclusively female, aside from a few metis males, due to the will of Pegasus and many members being Straw Feminists. Thus, while all tribes do not have enough members, this increased restriction further decreases the number of Furies in the world.
- Female Kinfolk may not be able to turn into werecreatures, but due to them being more likely to give birth to future shapeshifters, they are often forced to be bred by those they do not choose.
- Due to the supernatural taboo prohibiting two werewolves mating, not only doing so guarantees the female will get pregnant with a metis baby, but for the last few months of the pregnancy she has to maintain the warform of Crinos to handle such a baby coming to term, and the birthing process can be rather bloody, with the inherent healing ability of being a Garou the only reason the female has any hope of surviving the birthing process. Even if she survives, she bears the stigma of bearing an automatically-sterile metis instead of a baby that could one day reproduce.
- One short story features a female werewolf training to be a warrior. A werewolf's role in their society is determined by the phase of the moon they were born under, and those born under the full moon are Ahroun, or warriors. It's soon revealed that she's a runaway from the Get of Fenris tribe, and this subsection of the Tribe believes Fenris "does not allow the bitches of the Tribe to be warriors," and she ran away because she knew the claim that she was born under the crescent moon, making her a Theurge, was false. The matter is settled by the spirit of Fenris being summoned and validating her as being born under the full moon. The Get still rejects her, but the Children of Gaia Tribe welcome and adopt her.note
Video Games
- Genshin Impact: Kirara actually began life as a cat before she became a Nekomata. In addition to learning how to deal with life as a human, she is also having to learn how to be female, especially in how she dresses. She was such a fashion disaster that the fashion designer Chiori made her a special outfit for fear that when Kirara left her shop that people would think Kirara's "fashion" was indicative of Chiori's outfits.
- Howl
depicts a woman werewolf's transformation occurring at the same time as her period cramps, while sitting on a toilet in her bathroom. After the Painful Transformation is over, the narrator blithely notes,
But your period is not.
Web Videos
- Pop Cross Studios: Redemption of the Were-Jaguar deconstructs this trope with the titular were-jaguar, Vasilia Kuznet. Despite projecting an image of herself as a "tall, confident and gorgeous" woman (which, for the most part, she is), she secretly harbours deep shame at having been bitten and turned by another were-jaguar that she killed at the age of five. Early on, she used to transform uncontrollably and attack her family and neighbours, so an ashamed Vasilia tries hiding it from her friends, and especially her boyfriend Heath. So, upon arriving in another dimension which leaves Vasilia in a Shapeshifter Mode Lock, she panics and tries desperately to find a way to get them all home without giving her secret away. On top of that stress, Vasilia has to work alongside the Van Helsing family, whose ward, Gangadharan, treats her with unwarranted suspicion, which makes her angry enough to feel tempted to lose control and lash out. But as Gangadharan points out, her past woes don't justify her secretive behaviour:
Gangadharan: You claim I have trust issues, and yet, if you truly have control over this form and all its power, why would you not be constantly turning into it?Vasilia: Because I get enough judgment from family for it after years of not having control! Friends need not know about were-jaguar form, even if I do have control now!Gangadharan: Only further emphasizing my point! Either you don't have as much control as you claim, and avoid turning to conceal that fact, or you do have full control, as you say, and don't trust your friends to be accepting of your... more fanged side. So, don't lecture me about trust, because you're either a liar... Or a hypocrite.
As one sees, Woes of Wife-Were-Things Weren't Wholly Whimsical.
