Young Women and Disgust in Contemporary Norwegian Comics: A Close Reading of Ane Barstad Solvang's Frykt & medlidenhet

Abstract

The figure of the young woman who leaks bodily wastes, struggles mentally, and behaves in ways that disgust and provoke is recurrent in Norwegian comics drawn and written by women in the late 2010s (e.g., Neverdahl 2017; Øverbye 2018; Solvang 2018; Tegnehanne 2019). There are several reasons why women cartoonists’ preoccupation with young female characters and disgust is worthy of critical attention. On the one hand, Norwegian comics have had a spectacular development in the last decade, gaining critical acclaim and popularity (Birkeland, Risa, and Vold 2018), becoming more inclusive and diverse once several women cartoonists made their debut in a medium traditionally dominated by male creators. On the other hand, while Norway has an international reputation as one of the most gender equal countries in the world (see, for example, the United Nation’s “Gender Inequality Index”2), national studies paint a more somber picture when it comes to the situation of young women in Norway. For example, recent