THE AGE OF FEMALE RAGE

Public displays of anger by women were once frowned upon. But, fired up by issues such as police brutality and domestic inequality, female fury is rising to the fore.

- Gaby Hinsliff

THERE IS A JAR of severed heads sitting on the windowsill of Gemma Whiddett’s waiting room. China heads, to be precise, that customers have gleefully smashed from the shoulders of figurines she finds in charity shops. She drops the latest head into the jar, with a satisfying clink: all ready for the next session.

Whiddett manages Rage Rooms in Norwich , where customers can make an appointment to smash up heaps of unwanted crockery, small electrical appliances and miscellaneous jumble, using scaffolding poles. The concept first caught on in Japan as a way of working off stress, before spreading across the US and Europe, and is promoted as a fun, liberating means of venting everyday frustrations. And in Norwich around two-thirds of the customers are women.

“We had a group of little old ladies come in and I did wonder if they knew what they’d booked. But they absolutely got stuck in,” says Whiddett, a cheerful 40-year-old who reckons the most satisfying smashables are bread makers (“ They last for ages”). They get a lot of primary school teachers, she says, but this afternoon’s booking is for three impeccably mannered teenagers.

Maddie’s parents have driven her up from Suffolk for a belated 18th birthday celebration with friends Annabel and Kitty . The girls, fresh from trawling Norwich’s vintage clothes shops, explain that they’ve never done anything like this before. But they all know the episode of the Netflix series Sex Education where a bunch of teenage girls cathartically smash cars in a scrapyard, and they’ve all seen rage room videos on TikTok, where they’re often pitched as the antidote to relationship angst. “Block his number and smash up a printer instead,” as Tik Toker @vickaboo x urges her almost 800,000 followers.