Most people are rightfully peeved when a scowling woman is prodded to smile; looking constantly pretty isn't expected of men, so they aren't routinely asked to turn that frown upside down. In Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger, media critic Soraya Chemaly champions a second reason to resent this double standard: a woman encouraged to smile is implicitly discouraged from showing anger. And anger, Chemaly argues, is a positive force for change.
"Anger remains the emotion that is least acceptable for girls and women because it is the first line of defense against injustice," Chemaly writes, and, boy, do women have a lot to fume about. The first chunk of Rage Becomes Her discusses the gender pay gap, sexual harassment and violence, and other topics that have been covered more exhaustively by other writers. It's in the second part of her book that Chemaly earns her subtitle: it was female anger, she explains, after Donald Trump's 2016 presidential win, that spurred historic numbers of women to run for office. Female anger also helped give birth to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and other political movements.
Chemaly writes about injustice with vigor and flair, sharing her experiences as both a woman and the mother of daughters. She supports her conclusions with grim studies, most of them dispiritingly recent. "Is it possible to read a book about anger and not get mad?" she asks at one point. Not if it's Rage Becomes Her. But as Chemaly shows, that's a good reason to read it. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer