Trigger Warning: if you feel triggered by toxic patterns in relationships. First of all, I am so sorry you had to experience that, and I hope you heal from your bad experiences. Secondly, these are mentioned in the article, so read at your own risk.
This is an opinion piece based on my experiences and perspectives and is not an academic analysis of the term in pop culture. For anyone unfamiliar with the term female rage is defined in pop culture as intense, often disruptive emotional response to long-standing injustice, pain, or suppression — typically cast as irrational or dangerous, and I have been getting a lot of content thrown at me on this theme as I result I want to take this opportunity to discuss my views on the subject.
In pop culture, female rage is often equated with hysteria and extreme reactions. Some popular references are the song The Dishes Are Breaking by Jensen McRae and I Hate U by SZA express really strong expressions of grief and anger over a particular type of abuse in a relationship, mainly emotional neglect and gaslighting. Something else I have noticed is that this form of rage in media is often expressed by morally grey women characters, such as my Dunne from Gone Girl or Cassie in Promising Young Woman, and has been villainised by the creators to portray male redemption arcs in a positive light. Only very recently have I personally noticed a change in the archetypes that express this type of rage; however, these changes are restricted to characters in relationships who ultimately reconcile with their partner and face the stigma of looking for love and validation from their romantic interest. From personal experience and some basic reading, I do not believe we do the important expression of anger by women after centuries of silence, justice.
In my experience, angry women walk out like my neighbour did when she chose peace over years of emotional exhaustion, and like a friend did when she ended a long-term relationship that constantly invalidated her.. Many express their emotions in a perfectly emotionally intelligent manner and are mocked for it till they are pushed beyond a breaking point where society can call them ‘hysterical’. I have seen this happen with a woman I greatly admired in my block. The way I see it, the truth is that female rage is the response of women to being repeatedly unheard, belittled, and stretched thin by a world that expects their silence as default, and it manifests in so many forms like boundary-setting, leaving quietly, speaking out, and prioritising themselves again. However, the media thrown at us about it is made to polarise people and make it harder for women to express their rage authentically, as a result, many do not get the support they need or are dismissed as being too emotional.
As a reader, maybe reflect on how many angry women you have seen cry alone in bathrooms or write letters they never send, and how many slammed doors, threw things, or broke down publicly? But why is the latter only glorified in pop culture as female rage? Is it because that can be used to polarise the audience and profit from their clashes? I would also like to point out that recent scientific research has shown an all-time high in the level of anger in females, which it has attributed to persistent gender bias, emotional labour, and the erosion of time with family. However, women were not considered biologically consistent enough to be part of scientific studies until the late 20th century, and women of colour were only widely included after demands for intersectional representation in the 2000s. Many studies still measure male baselines for emotional and hormonal responses when studying female participants. How are we as a society equipped to portray emotions of a large chunk of the global population -women – when we do not understand how their biology and psychology have been designed?
So, my reflections have yielded that maybe female rage is not what the preppy Instagram trend wants me to believe it is; it is something so much more empowering. Female rage is reclamation of voice, space, and dignity, and I hope that I become someone who does not try to stifle her rage from the fear of being too sensitive, too much, or too angry to love.