Just as the cultural bias favors women who match a narrow definition of physical beauty, it likewise favors women who are well-behaved and agreeable. It's never a good time for women to express so-called "negative" emotions, especially anger, rage, and grief.

Which is absurd, because emotions are not good or bad, positive or negative.

They are all sacred; they all have purpose and function.

Anger, for example, is frequently the holder or messenger of other emotions, such as sadness.

Consider how the energy shifts when it’s “righteous” anger. Righteous anger is powerful and respected.

Just as I grew up with aging women as tropes and punchlines, angry women were also tropes and punchlines. Sometimes they overlapped with aging women. But a girl or woman of any age was never allowed to be angry.

Whereas all my life, men's anger about anything, however trivial, has always been justified and acceptable.

Out of curiosity, I researched several stock photography sites for images of anger. The results were a mix of people, scenes, and graphics. Many images of the people didn't even show faces, just body parts (like a clenched fist).

And many of the photos were not even anger! They were tangential, intense emotions like fear, surprise, or sadness.

Stock photography represents what we think is worth seeing. What's important, what's relevant, what's useful.

The lack of stock photography underscores the cultural belief that anger and rage are not valuable. If they were meaningful, we would have depictions of them. In these search results, there were very few women.

And in some cases there were no results. Zero exaggeration: there were zero hits.

Meaning that sites dedicated to photography(!) had NOTHING to depict anger.

So obsessed with love and fun that anger is literally unseen. Invisible.

Of course, love feels better than anger or hate. But hate is not the opposite of love.

The opposite of love is indifference.

Without love, you don’t care enough to hold anger.

That doesn't mean all acts of anger are acceptable.

But it does mean that anger and rage have the potential of being transmuted into deeper love.

Moreover, you can't be fully present in your own life if you don't honor all of your emotions. You can't be fully present with others if you deny parts of their experience.

Women are often told we need to have a valid reason to be angry. In my experience, though, my reasons have never been reason enough.

Anger, rage, and grief are natural, healthy, and sacred. The lack of context in the photo is important—because honoring rage is not about a “valid” context. Anger in whatever context is righteous, and it matters. 

These depictions are also related to considerations about beauty, in its broader sense of embodiment. The intensity of tears and screams have their own beauty. And they are motivated by deep love.

portraits by Emerald Dove Photography

conceptualized by Skyeris & Emerald Dove