“You’re so hot when you’re mad.”

I was freshly fifteen when I had the misfortune of those words worming into my mind. It was late, far past my bedtime, and my phone should’ve been tucked away in the bottom drawer of my parents’ bedside table. Yet there I was, under my covers, on the phone with my almost-boyfriend—let’s call him John—berating him over God-knows what: not texting back, or being “dry,” or something equally juvenile. John was eighteen with a speech impediment that prevented him from calling me pretty, even when I’d curled my hair and worn one of those low-cut tops I knew he liked. But he was ostensibly cured that night: my flared nostrils and scarlet complexion appeared to really be doing it for him. Even at freshly fifteen, I knew

something was wrong with the picture.

There’s something thrilling about a girl being ticked off that seems to unlock some sort of primal desire in many men. Even red, the color of anger, is associated with passion. Some might argue a biological reason for this dynamic: vasopressin, a hormone boosted by short-term stress (e.g.: getting screamed at by your girlfriend), is considered the dominant chemical source of male bonding. In other words, watching a woman fly off her rocker may very well chemically reinforce a man’s attraction to her. But that’s only a small part of the bigger justification at play here: power.

To put it simply, most men like having power over women. They’re drawn to being the dominant force in the relationship—whether through protectiveness or sheer ego. They like being able to see the emotional hold they have on a woman, hear her cries, taste her tears. And a woman displaying her anger because of a man—yelling or pacing or throwing things across theroom—sends the message that he has so much of an emotional hold on her that she can barely compose herself. Even as she bites and pierces and squeezes, she does it wrapped around his finger.

Of course, male attraction to women’s wrath has been more than well-represented in the media. Kathleen Hanna, double-daring her female audience to stand up for their rights with her breasts exposed, surely gave teenage boys a kick in the nineties. Harley Quinn, a female character wronged time and time again by a man (an alabaster man with green hair, no less) struts around committing merciless crimes in her strategically “distressed” t-shirt and spandex shorts that leave barely anything to the imagination. Uma Thurman as “The Bride” in Kill Bill, who literally embarks on a bloody, revenge-fueled rampage for nearly four hours straight, has been described by critics as “officially hot” (Christopher Orr, The Atlantic) with “a marvelous cast of lips” (Zachary M. Seward, The Harvard Crimson).

So will the fetishization of female rage ever come to an end? Unfortunately, not anytime soon. Asking a man to simply turn off his attraction to the idea of power and control would be like asking gravity to take a day off. And as for in pop culture, artists and other media creators (especially male ones) know just how much sexier a woman can be when she’s pissed off—and frankly, they’d be stupid not to use it to their advantage. After all, anyone who’s anyone knows that sex sells.

On the other hand, are women’s emotions doomed to be commodified forever? Not necessarily. While the media has always tried to spin fury into fetish, female rage, at its very heart, is what drives revolution. Think Sojourner Truth or Gloria Steinem. Being unapologetically angry and making your voice heard as a woman is what makes things happen—what has built movements, rewritten laws, and ultimately changed the world for the better.

So for the girls: while being angry and showing it might mean being overlooked by your boyfriend and having your emotions ignored in favor of how attractive they view you as, never take that as a sign to back down and hide yourself. The most powerful thing a woman can do with her rage? Refuse to package it into something pretty or hot—make