Why it matters that Beyonce, Kelly Ripa and Samantha Bee won’t hide their outrage
Women still penalized for an appropriate reaction
It’s tough to imagine Beyonce, Kelly Ripa and Mary Pat Christie hanging out over mix tapes and Chardonnay, but all three recently revealed one common characteristic: the willingness to be angry in public while female. They join a small but growing group of women, currently best symbolized by “Full Frontal’s” Samantha Bee, who increasingly reject the time-honored dictate that women must swallow their rage or cloak it in self-deprecating humor and/ or apology to avoid being characterized as hysterical or crazy.
These women are angry, and they are no longer afraid to showit.
After blowing up halftime at this year’s Super Bowl with militaristic directness, Beyonce surprise-dropped her album and companion film “Lemonade” last weekend. Shattering car windows, artistic conventions and whatever divisions still exist between music, literature, film and television, Beyonce walked us through the fury of betrayal. Scorched earth and dark hearts haven’t been this exquisitely evoked since “Apocalypse Now.”
Christie, meanwhile, managed to speak volumes with a single reflexive shift in expression.
Standing beside her husband, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, as they listened to Donald Trump celebrate his five-state primary sweep, the Garden State’s first lady reacted to Trump’s assertion that Hillary Clinton was “playing the woman’s card” with what may be the presidential campaign’s most significant irritated eye roll.
But it was Ripa who sparked a direct conversation about the issue of anger itself. After she was blindsided by the announcement that her co-host, Michael Strahan, was leaving “Live With Kelly & Michael” for an expanded role at “Good Morning America,” Ripa decided to take a few unscheduled days off. The immediate criticism of her “crazy” “meltdown” reaction and “diva-like” behavior was met with a backlash just as fast and even more furious.
Ripa was seen by many as yet another woman
being kept out of the loop of her own career by male bosses and colleagues. She had every right to be angry.
Why, asked thousands of Twitter and Facebook users, can’t a woman be outraged without being labeled a diva?
Anger, as we have been told ad nauseam during this election cycle, is the driving force of American discourse, the bond that unites supporters of billionaire dabbler Trump with the earnest progressives behind Sen. Bernie Sanders. It fuels our commentary, our comedy, our drama, our love of social media. At worst, we have become a nation of venters, easily provoked and quick to condemn.
At best, this time of rage reveals the gap between American desire and American reality. Historically, anger is the tinder of protest, often the only path to reform.
For women, though, it’s a bit trickier, as all those “angry feminists” can attest. As clashing reactions to Ripa and far too many studies reveal, women are still often penalized for getting angry, even when anger is the appropriate reaction to the situation.
Openly angry women have occasionally managed to break through in comedy and music— remember when Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” caused a collective pop-culture stroke?
Despite, or perhaps because of, all the negative connotations, the swearing and the shouting have grown louder and far more direct.
Amy Schumer’s character on her Comedy Central show may often seem inane and oblivious, but her sketches are pointedly political and deeply furious.
Late-night’s only female host has taken things to a new level. With a penchant for operatic crescendo and the blazer- wearing strut of a revivalist preacher, “Full Frontal’s” Bee gleefully follows Cynthia Ozick’s famous dictum: “When saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.”
Whether interviewing a man wrongly imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, slamming those who criticized the decision to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, or calling out conservative politicians who oppose abortion, birth control and the distribution of diapers, Bee likes her sarcasm 100 proof, and sometimes the party gets loud.
“Oh my God, conservatives,” she said, her voice sliding high and low, “make up your mind about poor babies. We thought you wanted them to be born. Why else would you oppose free contraception, wage jihad against Planned Parenthood, fight the FDA on Plan B and make abortion as unobtainable as a ticket to ‘Hamilton’? Well, like it or not, there are a lot of poor babies.”
It’s a far cry from Jon Stewart’s sardonic bemusement or Stephen Colbert’s satiric obliviousness: Bee is ticked off about a lot of things, and she is more than happy to explain why.
And so are Beyonce, Ripa and an increasing number of women. When she returned to “Live,” Ripa addressed the issue directly, saying that apologies had been made and, more important, that the incident had begun a larger conversation about “communication, consideration and most importantly respect in the workplace.”
But first she joked that she imagined SWAT teams were stationed in the studio, ready to take her down with tranquilizer darts if she went “off message.”
Clearly, the woman is still more than a little ticked off.