I Can Chew Gum & Think at the Same Time

I was thirteen when Heathers released in 1989. I watched it at a friend’s sleepover birthday party when I was fourteen or fifteen and it fucked me up, to be frank. I can’t think of a more shocking movie I watched at this time of my life—it disturbed me more than The Exorcist, I think. I was more afraid of girls at my school murdering each other with cold indifference than I was demonic possession.

It’s actually really fucking dark apart from the valley-girl satire and black comedy. It deals with heavy themes like rape, suicide, homophobia, and overdosing on drugs in HIGH SCHOOL.

“Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw.”

“Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count.”

Kids at my school adopted the valley-girl vernacular instantly. “How very.” “What’s your damage?” and of course, I always credit this movie for starting the trend of girls calling each other terms of endearment like “You stupid fuck” and “You goddamn bitch. You make me want to puke.”

Lick it up, baby. Lick. It. Up.

Even though it tackles serious themes, it’s ridiculously funny too. The scene where the Heathers are playing croquet in the backyard and you realize they have buried Winona Ryder’s character in the ground up to her neck and are smacking balls off her head, is iconic really.

There hasn’t been a movie like Heathers ever again. JAWBREAKER (1999) tried, but it didn’t even come close. It’s kind of like if CLUELESS (1995) and MEAN GIRLS (2009) had a goth friend. It’s basically a toxic friend group who decide to kidnap the prom queen and they stick a jawbreaker in her mouth to silence her, which she chokes on in the trunk of the car and dies.

“Her screams were muffled by the huge candy ball. She tried, but there was nothing. Only sugary sweet death.”

“Oh my God. That like, totally gave me the chills.”

MEAN GIRLS for sure borrowed shit from JAWBREAKER.

Here are the movies I believe swim in the same pink, glittery pool tinged with blood splatter with HEATHERS.

The common denominator is script flippage on female archetypes and black comedy/satire. It’s shocking, gory, fucked-up, beautiful, and funny. And yes, since BUBBLEGUM HORROR exists as a film genre, the same can be said for books. We should not fight against this label when it is applied correctly. BUBBLEGUM HORROR or its more formless sister label, “Pink Horror” is (in my humble opinion) inherently feminist. But it means different things to different people, so I don’t use it anymore. Back in the day, it LITERALLY meant horror books with pink covers. Period.

BUBBLEGUM is meant to firmly disrupt the genre’s longtime obsession with relegating women as nameless victims for male boogeyman or villain. It demands a female creature. The monster is a woman and she will eat your face. And the tone is PLAYFUL the genre is HORROR

She’s baking cupcakes and then she’s cutting people up in her basement. She’s your nanny and your worst nightmare. She wants the lead role and she will kill her competition. She wants revenge.

She’s an urban legend.

She will date a corpse.

She wants eternal youth and beauty.

She wants a mate.

She will fight demons and bullies to save her best friend.

She hates billionaires.

She’s a witch.

And it’s my theory that a lot of people categorize the wrong books as “BUBBLEGUM HORROR”. There are books that center female trauma brought on by patriarchal oppression, systemic racism, colonization, misogyny, and domestic abuse and those are not black comedies or satire. BUBBLEGUM HORROR is 100% characterized by satire and I will die on that hill. You have to feel like you’re laughing at something that feels grossly inappropriate.

The last 30 minutes of the Substance was gloriously disgusting, horrifying, and hilarious all at the same time. And even though BLACK SWAN exposes industry standards and the younger star threatening the livelihood of the older star, BLACK SWAN is not a black comedy so it’s not BUBBLEGUM

Just like Rachel Harrison, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Ling Ling Huang books are not BUBBLEGUM either.

More recommendations:

Imani Thompson on HONEY

“The theory that I’d been looking at, questions I had about being a woman in the world, being a woman of color, those histories. I knew as well, with those themes, that it was going to be quite dark. I was going to have to look at gender-based violence but I was very conscious that I wanted the book to feel engaging. I wanted it to be funny and I did want to make it commercial as well in its premise and pitch, which is why I came up with the idea of this woman who was a serial killer on the hunt for bad men. It’s not something I thought I would write about. It’s not a genre I read loads about but I thought it was a really great way to satirize the university, the theory that I was studying, and make the book funny whilst keeping all of that theory and all of that politics at the core of it.”

—Debutiful author interview (May 2026)

Read the interview with Virginia Feito in The Italian Rêve

“No, this one was specific. It all came from the voice of the character – the tone of the book came with a sentence from the character that I thought of, which is still in the book at the beginning, when she says that her breasts are moving in her corset, but in a very specific way. From there I understood what the tone of the novel was going to be and how it was going to be a bit absurd and how the character was also kind of aggressive, sarcastic, funny and “Fleabag-ish”.”