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What is ‘Female rage’ ?
What is called ‘female rage’ is a form of intense anger that can be found in women, often following an internalized, silent rage due to the gendered and sexist expectations of society. ‘Female rage’ can also designate a way of expressing this feeling that goes beyond anger and is an emotion that occurs and worsens due to the accumulation of discrimination, frustration, and trivialized sexism. Indeed, society does not always accept that women express themselves freely in the face of these inequalities. This anger, or ‘female rage’, should therefore not even exist according to these expectations and that is precisely why the frustration increases tenfold.
We can find many representations of this feminine rage in social movements, art, literature or cinema, for instance in:
The Substance by Coralie Fargeat (2024)
This film shows a situation that degenerates because of the beauty standards imposed on women in society. Indeed, in this film, a fifty-year-old woman, Elisabeth Sparkle, loses her job on a sports programme on television. She does not accept this situation and tries everything to try to rejuvenate herself with a mysterious substance. She ends up no longer controlling these changes, her body deforms, deteriorates, and eventually explodes. We see that she is never satisfied and develops a form of rage against society and against herself because she is fed up with never being young enough, beautiful enough, perfect enough. The film therefore uses horror and disgust in the image to shock the audience and show how far she is willing to go to achieve these impossible standards of beauty.
Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky (2010)
In this film, we follow the life of a young dancer, Nina Sayers, who wants to get a role in the ballet Swan Lake. She must play the white swan and her double the black swan but she encounters many difficulties. Nina is under enormous pressure from the people around her but also especially from herself. She begins to have hallucinations and sees her body transform without being able to control it. She develops a rage because of a desire for perfection, jealousy and rivalry with other dancers that reinforces the idea that society pushes women to always be in competition. Nina does everything to match what is expected of her, she can’t express what she feels and ends up destroying herself, mentally and physically.
We find in these works several aspects and representations of this ‘female rage’; it can concern the desire for revenge, and the feeling of betrayal or injustice.
The explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the way people are educated, which is very different for men and women.
From a very young age, little girls are educated in a certain way and they are encouraged to deny their anger and remain smiling and kind. On the contrary, little boys are pushed to express themselves and even if the expression of their emotions is also sometimes difficult because of society’s injunctions, the expression of anger or disagreement is rarely considered a defect but rather testifies to their courage, their will or motivation and their strength of character. These values are much less highlighted among women. Later if women express this anger, they are often called ‘hysterical’, they are asked to ‘calm down’ and they can be in denial of their anger. Thus, ‘female rage’ is often set in opposition to male rage, which would be an anger expressed directly in a noisier and aggressive way without hesitation. Thanks to feminism, it can be analyzed and this topic can be discussed more freely.
Finally, ‘female rage’ can therefore be considered as a political subject since it is caused by the injunctions of society on women, which force them to evolve with the idea that they are not allowed to express their anger and that they must simply accept what is imposed on them. This is part of sexism and inequalities, which are political subjects and can be changed through the mobilization and awareness of the population.
Edited by Ruby Fry
Image: Feminist, Feminism, Feminine royalty-free vector graphic by b0red, 2017 // CC0 1.0 Universal
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