Rgirls screaming during demonstrations, film clips, poetry slams, tears. The hashtag #femalerage (female anger, ed.) has been circulating insistently for months: will it have the same popularity as #MeToo? It is a slogan, a movement, an emotional response to discrimination, to the news that serves us black stories every day. On TikTok there are millions of #femalerages and they are growing every week. On Instagram the theme on female fury collects hundreds of thousands of pages, photos and videos.
Social psychology studies say that, in recent years, women are experiencing anger more often and more intensely than men. The survey also documents this, complete with graphs Gallup World Poll conducted from 2012 to the end of 2022 in 150 countries, on 120 thousand people. Not only. Jobirian online career consultant, interviewed 1,053 women between the ages of 18 and 65.
38 percent report sexist or body shaming ads (“Not overweight, just good looking”), the male-only declination of a profession. 56 percent had to talk about their situation as a couple, 55 percent about their children. There is no shortage of harassment (16 percent) and promises of employment in exchange for sexual favors (12 percent).
The fury of women
There’s something to be furious about, especially when it’s impossible to let off steam. In Milan, in an anonymous warehouse, the women go to break dishes on the advice of the psychologist (30 items in the premium package, 15 minutes and a souvenir video). Those who have tried it find it liberating, given that in daily life they have to be calm, conciliatory, empathetic.
Viola Stefanello talks about her experience online: «When you arrive in a rage room, an employee explains the rules to you. There is no clock inside. The time is marked by four songs chosen by them, you can destroy everything you find in the room. Yell, swear, do whatever you want. You have fifteen minutes. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly violent person. However, I know that a part of me, not even hidden, wants to destroy everything.” Sonya Chemaly, who became famous with Anger makes you beautifulsays exactly this: Since we were little we’ve been told that an angry face is ugly. We must always smile and dissemble, otherwise it is easy to be branded as crazy and hysterical.
Furies is a Vietnamese film in which a mother trains three girls to kill men guilty of abusing women.
The women stopped crying
On TikTokamong the youngest, even older songs such as Savages by Marina and the Diamonds (“I’m not afraid of God, I’m afraid of man”) and it spreads A&Wby Lana Del Rey: «I mean, look at my hair / Look at the length of it and the shape of my body / If I told you I was raped / Do you really think anyone would think I didn’t ask for it? / I didn’t ask for it.” The women stopped crying: this was to be expected.
Female anger conquers cinema and TV
Before society, it is fiction that collects the input. Rebel MoonZack Synder’s latest filmset in the usual dystopian universe (the first part has just been released on Netflix, the next in April) consecrates Kora’s anger (Sofia Boutella), mysterious warrior girl raised in hatred, who turns against the Mother World, very masculine despite its name, a world of sadistic generals and senseless wars.
Another “no” had come with Don’t Worry Darling, presented at the Venice Film Festival, where Alice (Florence Pugh) rebels against her husband Jack (Harry Styles), who without her consent takes her into a simulation where the women are perfect fifties housewives and spend their days vacuuming, having dinners, shopping and martinis by the pool. But Jack took away Alice’s job (she was a surgeon) and a life that she wants back. Instead of crying, she rebels, and the whole story has a horror twist. Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girlhoped with her thriller to open a debate on anger, but she didn’t succeed.
Actresses try: Emily Blunt talks: «I was part of the Halloween film saga which, from a sociopolitical point of view, predicted the future and the rise of female rage, women determined to regain their power, not to suffer in silence». Anya Taylor-Joy in an interview with the BBC she declared herself “tired of reading scripts in which men act cruelly towards women and they are not allowed to react”.
A scene from Rebel Moon, a science fiction fantasy, where Sofia Boutella plays Kora, a dangerous creature. ph: Chris Strother / © Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection
The reasons for anger are anthropological
As Almut Schmale-Riedel argues in the essay The anger of women, «adaptability is the way to please others. And we, above all else, want to please.” Paola Danieli, psychologist and psychotherapist, explains: «It is quite common for women to experience anger as a dangerous element since childhood. At home and at school, good girls are rewarded for staying calm and quiet and putting up with it. Women are not free to express their emotionsthey carry the mission of pleasure and therefore their behavior cannot be unpleasant and annoying, it cannot uncover conflicts and shortcomings: the task of women, as demonstrated by their image in the media, is not to change the world, but to beautify it”.
Nevertheless, from the East with fury comes a breath of unrepressed anger. In two brand new, much-watched Korean series (The Glory And My Name on Netflix) women no longer adapt, on the contrary they react violently. In Furies, Vietnamese film, Ngo is a mother who trains three teenagers to kill to eliminate human traffickers. There are many reasons for this global anger: the tiredness and loneliness of motherhood, the inequalities in the workplace, the feeling of not being truly safe.
But it is often an anger that doesn’t know what to do with itself and ends up becoming, in many cases, self-destructive. Says Megan Nolan, an Irish writer who has now become a cult thanks to her novel Acts of submission: «I agree with the theory that female self-destruction is an anger forced to turn inward, which implodes, transforming into eating disorders, self-harm, addictions, devastation. It is also true that expressing anger means, for a woman, she risks attracting material violence».
She is controlled, but up to a certain point, by the super-tough Dot (Juno Temple), the filiform protagonist of the fifth season of Fargo (on Sky and Now). About her Her fury against the man who chases her to take her back as his property gives her a surprising strength. Cult joke between mother and child taking refuge in a policewoman’s house: «Here is the DVD of the Mermaid, do you want to see it, darling?” The little girl, who is all her mother, he sighs: «Princess are stupid». New generations…
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