...Victoria Pedretti’s portrayal of Love Quinn from Netflix’s You series confronting her murdering, philandering husband, Joe Goldberg. Another example is Natalie Portman’s portrayal of Nina Sayers in Black Swan, a lead professional ballerina who loses herself in exchange for achieving her dreams. This type of rage is considered intense in part due to its taboo nature in western society, women going against the “best practices” and behaving in ways we’d feel more comfortable attributing to a male-coded character. 

The second part of this specific scope, the coming-of-age genre, is defined on MasterClass as, A sub-classification for teen movies in which the story, quote, “follow(s) the lives and adventures of young adults,” unquote, generally involving characteristics like character growth and social commentary while having dialogue heavy plots. Typically the plot follows an outsider breaking into a clique and learning about the high school landscape, including how relationships function, the consequences to certain behaviors, and the social fabrics. I don’t think it’s wild to attribute many high school tropes as mini-versions of adult milestones, an audition for adulthood with less consequences.

Coming-of-rage is a well regarded sub-genre of and includes many huge movies like The Breakfast Club, a 1985 classic John Hughes movie about a group of high school peers spending Saturday in detention. Starring Molly Ringwald as popular in pink Claire Standish, Ally Sheedy as quiet outcast Allison Reynolds, Emilio Estevez (Em-il-io Es-tey-vez) as popular jock Andrew Clark, Judd Nelson as bad boy John Bender punching the sky in triumph by the end of the movie, and Anthony Michael Hall as the nerdy Brian Johnson, endearing and relatable.

Another coming of age staple is the 1995 movie, Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone (Aly-sha) as Cher Horowitz, Stacey Dash as Cher’s best friend Dionne Davenport, Paul Rudd as Cher’s step brother Josh, Brittany Murphy as new girl Tai, and Donald Faison (Fay-sen) as Dionne’s boyfriend Murray. The comedy laden plot follows teenage Cher as she faces challenges specific to Beverly Hills but relatable to teen girls.

Later in 2004 Mean Girls came out with a similar focus but this time we follow the new girl, Cady Heron played by Lindsay Lohan, as she infiltrates the school’s top clique, the Plastics, including Rachel McAdams as Regina George, Amanda Seyfried as Karen Smith, and Lacey Chabert (Shuh-bear) as Gretchen Wieners. In a more serious summer break example Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants came out in 2005 based on a tight-knit friend group that spent the break apart but sent a pair of magical pants back and forth with updates about their adventures. Coming of age has taken many forms but from here on out we’ll be looking at examples of Feminine Coming of Rage Horror. 

This type of horror is obviously rage filled, sometimes internal and other times external. It also includes psychological elements and lessons that pertain to womanhood and what it means to be a woman. 

I’m sure many examples exist, maybe even better examples, but the ones in this series include more than one personal favorite: Carrie 1976, Heathers 1989, The Craft 1996, The Rage: Carrie 2 1999 all in this article and then part 2 of the series will cover Ginger Snaps 2000, Jennifer’s Body 2009, Tragedy Girls 2017, Totally Killer 2023, and finally Lisa Frankenstein 2024. The movies will be in chronological order and timestamps will be included in the description if you’re only interested in certain movie’s analyses.

...through individual trial and error and through forced social spaces like work and school, both not included in part one. Trial and error from experiences, anecdotal included, can heavily inform the choices of women based on the positive or negative outcomes. For example, dating best practices for women are generally derived from one’s own dating experiences combined with those of trusted women who share do’s and don’ts.

Work or school spaces that are somewhat necessary to exist within have a varying degree of issues that women face and how they are taught to deal with such issues. For example, some communities prefer issues between women to be dealt with in a street fight whereas others prefer to deal with issues through passive aggression or repetitional attacks. The spaces can greatly inform how women believe they should behave, and unrequested feedback is often given to young girls and women. Feminism is another through-thread of modern womanhood that prescribes not only individual lifestyle directives but greater womanhood ones as well. As feminism became a more solid ideology represented by organizations and centralized beliefs it became easier to identify what you were quote-unquote "supposed to do" as well as what would fall outside that norm.

Britannica defines feminism as, "-the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes...manifested, worldwide and... represented by various institutions...on behalf of women's rights and interests." With equality being defined as equal treatment, status and/or freedom from discrimination. Four distinct waves of feminism are identified on History.com as the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Waves. The First is thought to be from the 1800s through the 1920s and centered around women's suffrage. Following that the Second Wave from the 1960s to 1980s became a notable time of women pushing back on the confines of gender roles as wives and mothers.

Once women's issues turned from basic rights and respect to issues that thrived in the shadows like the patriarchy as a system, sexual assault by members of the government like Anita Hill's testimony against Clarence Thomas who went on to become a Supreme Court justice. This era is marked by Riot Grrl music, girl pop artists, and eras of fashion aesthetics like grunge that attempted to take attention away from women's bodies. The fourth wave is more nebulous and less defined as of now, but the #MeToo movement of 2017 is mentioned as a shift in women's issues, which I'll discuss more about later.