Carrie, Crystal Lake and the Price of Conformity

Fifty years later, although we have progressed far in menstrual education and acceptance, the shame surrounding women’s bodies and their reproductive functions can still crop up. A survey by Always stated that 85% of young people have tried to hide the fact that they are on their period from others. Carrie’s blood in the film becomes a visible manifestation of the abject, a part of her body that society teaches her to conceal to remain socially acceptable. Keeping this scene within Flanagan’s adaptation substantiates and retains Creed’s idea of the reproductive system being an abhorrent and intimidating spectacle, with blood depicting a direct correlation between woman as demon, as monster, as quintessentially grotesque. 

In the series, this humiliation extends beyond the locker room, and reflects a world where shame can be documented and indefinitely circulated. Young women face not only peer cruelty but the prospect of digital embarrassment that outlasts the original incident, while Flanagan’s decision to involve American high school students in the writers’ room further grounds his portrayal in contemporary adolescent experience. 

These anxieties exist within a broader landscape in which women’s bodily autonomy remains contested. In a post-Roe v. Wade United States, concerns over menstrual surveillance include potential law-enforced access to period-tracking data and proposals to record the menstrual histories of school athletes. In the UK, school bathroom restrictions and safeguarding guidance have raised similar concerns about bodily privacy and access to sanitation. Such developments echo Carrie’s humiliation. 

Margaret’s Christian fundamentalism leads her to treat sexual knowledge and adolescent independence as threats to Carrie’s purity. She refuses to serve a teenager buying sexual paraphernalia, and insists that it is ​“up to me what she knows and when” when challenged over Carrie’s ignorance of menstruation. Her authority reflects conservatism’s wider desire to control young women’s access to information about their bodies and desires. Yet Margaret is not simply an embodiment of right-wing oppressors – Flanagan also presents her as a victim, a woman terrified of a corrupt world who believes that keeping Carrie uninformed will protect her. 

Margaret passes the shame she has internalised down to Carrie, becoming both a catalyst and cultivator of her rage. When Carrie finally calls her a bully, years of repression become impossible to contain. Female monstrosity emerges not simply as resistance, but as the consequence of an oppressive cycle of fear and control. Unlike the 1976 film, in which Carrie kills Margaret in a brutal culmination of her insurrection, the series (spoilers ahead) has Adelaide (Kate Siegel), a member of the shadowy telekinetic group, kill her instead, depriving Carrie of a final act of retribution and softening her potential redemption arc in order to secure a second series.

Pamela Voorhees in Crystal Lake offers a different embodiment of monstrous femininity. Like Carrie, Jason Voorhees is labelled a ​‘freak’ by his peers. But whilst Margaret White weaponises Carrie’s exclusion to dogmatise her own authoritarianism, Pamela sees her son as perfect and internalises his rejection as her own failure as a mother, fuelling her rage. In the original Friday the 13^th (1980), Pamela is revealed as the hidden killer in the penultimate scene. Initially, audiences suspect Jason, and fans have long debated whether Pamela could carry out the murders alone. Her revelation as the killer embodies the monstrous feminine, an unassuming mother whose violence challenges conventional motherhood, even as it emerges from maternal devotion. In Crystal Lake Pamela is granted greater agency, her murderous streak emerging before Jason’s familiar voice reappears, her violence ultimately separated from her son’s influence.