Earlier this week, in the wee hours of the morning, I was pulling onto my street after dropping my toddler off at day care when I heard the familiar screech of electric guitar crashing into ticking time-bomb drums at the start of Hole’s “Violet.” Granted, like so many women this week, I was exhausted. Did I already say it was early? Did I mention I have a toddler? How about the fact that I’d spent the previous five or so days absorbing the sad absurdity of the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, and the subsequent exhuming of my own high school traumas? Anyway, within seconds I was no longer just a Hudson Valley mom screaming “You should learn how to say NO” at the top of her lungs, at 7:30 a.m., while wildly drumming the dashboard of her recently serviced Subaru Outback. I was also teen me, eyes closed, arms crossed, feet planted in the middle of a ’90s mosh pit.
I should add that I listen to this particular radio show, a goofy mashup of the punk of my youth and current college-rock fare, as a blessed respite from the otherwise unrelenting hail storm of alarming news that hits me from all angles, all day long. It’s my daily self-care ritual—20 minutes there, 20 minutes back. But this week, which also happens to be the release week of Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad, a sharp look at how women’s rage is reshaping America (also see: All the Best New Books and Films Are About Female Anger), this specific song felt downright cathartic.
In other words, it helped. So much so that I was inspired to pull together a list of songs with similarly satisfying displays of female anger unleashed, songs that display the full range of feminine rage, from X-Ray Spex’s defiant, sax-filled 1977 screamathon “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” to the boiling-over wrath of Beyoncé, holding a baseball bat and wondering “What’s worse, looking jealous or crazy?” Rage on, sisters.
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