Final girl

The final girl is a trope from horror films, particularly slasher films, in which a killer (supernatural or human) mows through the cast leaving only one character (the "final girl") alive to confront the killer.

Numerous works have employed the final girl trope. In its most stereotypical form, the fictional killer kills off the assertive or sexually active ("promiscuous" in the context of the work) women until only the "final girl", who is more naive, virginal, and innocent than her friends, survives. In slasher films particularly, the deaths of the non-final girls may be gory and gruesome, and the connection between those violent deaths and the sexuality and gender of the victims has raised concerns.

Feminist literary critics beginning with Kate Millett and continuing through Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, and others, have argued that the use of gory and graphic violence, and even implied violence, in imagery of women is both an expression of misogyny and an incitement to misogynistic violence. Anti-porn feminists have further linked violence to images of presumed degradation or humiliation, and suggested that such imagery may be problematic even when the context is very different -- as in, consensual lesbian SM, kinky sex generally, etc.

See also:

• Women in refrigerators