In a recent conversation with a friend, we found ourselves idolizing the gritty and graceless outbursts of Mia Goth in Pearl or Isabelle Adjani in Possession, yet we quietly acknowledged that this sort of rage seemed confined to the digital sphere. We agreed that “Female Rage”—a capitalized phrase in every sense of the word—often fails to manifest as genuine, unrelenting defiance against the patriarchy in real life. I’ve yet to witness a Katherine Lester-style transformation, like Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth, unfold in reality.
At its most basic, there is a significant disconnect between portrayals of female fury in cinema, social media, and lived experiences. Exploring this trend as a form of emotional catharsis could explain its prominence online. It’s also valuable to look at historical, non-digital expressions of female anger and compare the two forms. First, let’s clarify what we mean by ‘Female Rage.’
Unanimously coined by the internet, the term describes raw and brutal expressions of female fury in mainstream media. These portrayals often respond to social and environmental injustices, patriarchal constraints, or acts of sexual violence—highlighting a departure from the traditional ‘nagging mother’ stereotype. Instead, we see this woman most often in revenge or empowerment narratives like Stephen King’s Carrie, or Promising Young Woman. This is a necessary step towards creating more complex female characters for our current culture, but the recent trend that is Female Rage has created a niche that leverages their turmoil into an aesthetic.
Between the monologues of Gone Girl and Hereditary, and the anguished screams of Midsommar and Black Swan, female wrath is distilled into ten-second fancams underscored by Tchaikovsky’s (playfully ironic) “Swan Lake.” Across video making and sharing platforms, this trend has succeeded in its goal to become highly consumable. Female rage evolved into an aesthetic—a marker of frustration directed towards the patriarchy. This isn’t to diminish the validity and importance of women expressing the unfettered, full spectrum of emotions, but Female Rage as an online theme has been curated and tailored towards digital culture. Alone, it struggles to address real, entrenched worldly issues because of the gap between reality and what we see on our screens. What Female Rage can offer us is a mode of catharsis and for our own contempt and agitation towards the male-dominated society. Much like how Thelma (Geena Davis) shot her would-be rapist, Harlan (Timothy Carhart), for example, we might experience a vicarious release of tension and empathy for her. This is where we witness the rise of the accompanying ‘Good for Her’ trope. Watching explosive or vengeful scenes in movies in any genre might help us validate our own emotions, allowing us to confront or dissipate our own rage from the comfort of our screens.
Writer and political Youtuber Alice Capelle notes, “in the context of female rage, cathartic movies serve to create a space for [that] anger to exist. But ultimately, that goal is to leave that anger behind […] and live hand in hand with patriarchy again.” She supplements her discussion with a theory from the late American scholar Laurent Berlant, who defines the “female complaint” as a type of “safety valve” where one can freely express a grievance but are fundamentally unable to resolve it because it lies beyond their power to do so. At first, I found this concept dismissive of women’s capacity to address issues and be taken seriously. However, I came to realize that this article itself is an exemplar of the ‘female complaint,’ unable to shift the vast and entrenched culture of social media. Nevertheless, Female Rage exemplifies that while some anger is directed at the patriarchy, it is still largely produced for and consumed by a female audience. Let’s not forget that the trend was also curated for online platforms. The conversation my friend and I had mirrored this theory too, as we realized that conflating our anger with Female Rage was only a subtle form of activism—one that went unnoticed by the very men it was meant to address.
So what do men think of all of this? With that, I consulted my boyfriend so he could provide the cold, hard male gaze for our discussion. He had never heard of the concept of Female Rage—he bargained, “isn’t that just women being angry all the time?” After I showed him a few examples, he only grew more confused by the out of context quick-cut montages made of clips from various movies enmeshed together. Although he acknowledged that these characters existed within their own fictional worlds, he felt that the trend disconnected the characters from their narratives, reducing their complex portrayals to mere sensationalism (well, not in so many words).
Another point from Capelle sprung to mind—Female Rage is a compilation of fictional outbursts that exist in the action, thriller, or horror genres, where gore and violence are commonplace. Capelle continued, “Female Rage is accepted, entertaining, when we know it is not real.” This might explain why we find certain catharsis in cinematic portrayals, yet it also reveals a limitation in how we don’t take these representations seriously, knowing they are fiction.
The trend feels stagnant. Female Rage relishes in anguish and frenzy which are temporary reactions to an immediate issue. By isolating these emotions, they feel drawn out and unsustainable across punchy visuals and buzzwords. For someone like Audre Lorde, a feminist and civil rights activist, anger is both natural and necessary to gain credence in political discussion. In her 1981 article ‘The Uses of Anger,’ she highlights the nuance and complexity our online trend simply doesn’t consider. Lorde writes of her experience as a Black lesbian who thinks of anger as an energizing, generative power for discussion, whereas the trend of Female Rage wants to merely express the emotion and unite those who feel the same way under a vague aesthetic.
Feminist scholar Jilly Boyce Kay underscores Lorde’s argument, “to ‘unleash’ anger cannot [only] be an individualized, cathartic release that makes us feel better,” but we must look at the different types of anger and who they are coming from. Kay continues to explain that we must recognize that all angers are not morally equal and that there are some manifestations of “women’s anger” that we might see as anti-feminist, like that of right-wing spokesman Katie Hopkins. Kay finishes, “whose anger is legible within media culture? On what terms is it made visible? Whose anger is rendered invisible and/or illegitimate? Why do some angry subjects or manifestations of rage gain political traction while others seem to remain at the level of visibility only?” The Female Rage trend often showcases anger through the lens of young, attractive, white actresses, creating a representation that may cater to individual experiences but risks promoting a superficial or aspirational image of rage rather than calling for meaningful or transformative action.
While Female Rage can offer a valuable outlet for expressing and validating the viewer’s own anger, it is crucial to recognize its limitations that keep the trend confined to the online world. For now, it unites its viewers in a shared catharsis against the patriarchy, but real change requires anger to move beyond the superficial and its shock-value aesthetic. Indeed, we should be angrier, and it should be more visible—but first, it has to survive offline.