Your Changing Body
Revisiting “Teeth” and its views on sexual education.
The first time I watched “Teeth,” I was fifteen and I hated it. I was riddled with puberty and at the height of my pretentious “only Tarantino films exist” phase, so it was too “juvenile” for me. I didn’t even finish the movie.
But for years, I thought about Teeth a lot for someone who hadn’t liked it.
Almost ten years later, I gave it another shot.
Let me tell you: I think little virgin me was just afraid of the film’s plethora of on-screen dick shots. I somehow forgot about each dismembered dongle and dangle. Every half-bitten boner had been unfairly erased from my brain.
Why does this matter?
Well, because male nudity is just one of many body horror subversions that makes Teeth a pretty great film.
This charming little horror-comedy stars Jess Weixler as Dawn O’Keefe (you know, like the vagina artist). Dawn is a motivational abstinence speaker. She’s sweet, virginal, and wears more clothing layers than an onion in wintertime.
What I like about Dawn is that she’s prime, conventional Final Girl material; her virtue is her armor. As our protagonist, she’s safe from the deaths awaiting her sex-addled peers and will inevitably emerge victorious and intact at the end of the movie.
Female nudity “is not only accepted but expected,” yet the penis rarely rears its head. When it does, it’s for shock value.
Except that Teeth isn’t conventional.
Instead, Dawn gets raped about 20 minutes into the film.
It’s a horrifying, but short, scene in which her crush Tobey (Hale Appleman) forces himself on her in a hidden lake cave. Both teens are pro-abstinence. However, Tobey fails to control his sexual urges and, seeing no better outlet, decides to rape Dawn instead. Mid-act, a loud crunch is heard. He screams in pain. His dismembered penis falls to the ground and Dawn scrambles back in confused horror.
Soon after, Tobey disappears into the water. Dawn is left alone, violated and crying.
From there, it’s a roaring, raunchy rampage aimed at the dangers of abstinence-only education and a cunning jab at the “sex kills” horror trope that would have normally shielded Dawn in your average slasher.
Not to say there’s anything wrong with abstinence — in theory. In practice, its refusal to acknowledge teen sexuality as a normal part of development leads to greater risks for pregnancy and STIs. Unsurprisingly, ignoring sexual urges does not make them go away.
My own sex education was hardly better than Dawn’s.
One high school biology class briefly covered sexual anatomy and reproduction. I remember my male teacher wincing at the word “vagina.”
The message was clear: my sexuality was something to be both protected and feared. It was a locked box and no one opened that box but me…more often than I should admit.
As for Dawn, this lack of female sex education is best addressed in two instances: her biology class and gynecologist visit.
In Dawn’s biology class, the penis anatomy is on full display. The vagina one — a word that this teacher can also barely say — is covered with a sticker. Clearly, penises are more acceptable to see and talk about. Guys even draw them on everything; they’re pretty much a part of our everyday life.
Yet this phallic obsession does not translate over into media.
Horror and nudity go hand-in-hand. But, as iHorror writer Waylon Jordan points out, female nudity “is not only accepted but expected,” yet the penis rarely rears its head. When it does, it’s for shock value.
Teeth’s way to mock this double standard is to show us as much dick as possible. Each dismembered, well, member is a testament to the allowances we make for young men. It’s shocking, yes, but it’s rare nudity with an even rarer purpose.
It forces this little lone penis to walk the path of its vaginal counterpart: one of vulnerability.
Later on, Dawn patiently soaks the vaginal paper model in water to pull the sticker off. An almost euphoric harp melody plays when she finally sees it. She smiles. Determined to take her sexual health into her own hands, she goes to have her vagina examined for abnormalities.
Her male gynecologist — an oxymoronic phrase — takes advantage of her anatomical naivete. Under the guise of a routine examination, he sticks his whole hand in her vagina. As Dawn cries out in pain, he advises to just “breathe through it.”
Worse still, when he encounters the eponymous teeth, he accuses her of putting something in her vagina as a joke.
He’s soon short a few groping fingers.
Teeth is a cautionary tale with enough light-hearted surrealism to make its message easier to swallow. While none of us have a second pair of teeth, the imagery of it and what it says about sexual education is clear: we owe it to our young women to teach them about their bodies.
Exploring your sexuality is a natural part of growing up. I’m just lucky that I didn’t need a toothed vagina to eventually figure that out.
“Teeth” is currently available on Tubi. I would recommend a double-feature with “Ginger Snaps” to explain puberty to your blossoming teens.
