People are calling Shakira ‘bitter’ after her unapologetically savage ‘diss tracks’ about ex-husband Gerard Pique – so what if she is?

By offering up her own feelings about her romantic life, Shakira has deviated from the path we expect women to tread so carefully.

Shakira, according to her “diss track” about her ex-husband Gerard Pique, is worth “two 22-year-olds” – a reference to his new alleged partner. Only two? As the music video breaks records for being the most-viewed Latin song in YouTube’s history, I’d argue she’s worth at least ten.

The collaboration with Argentinian producer and DJ Bizarrap racked up over 63 million views in 24 hours, partly because the lyrics – written by Shakira – are unapologetically savage. Less than a month later, just in time for Valentine’s Day, the musician posted a video of herself lip-syncing to SZA’s Kill Bill, which features the tongue-in-cheek lyrics, “I just killed my ex, not the best idea…”

After Pique appeared to respond to the diss track by announcing a partnership with Casio (and going Instagram official with his new girlfriend), some of his fans took aim at Shakira on social media, with one even tweeting, “You gotta admit, this guy keeps winning. She’s out there creating diss tracks showing everyone that she’s bitter, while he’s out there banging 22 year olds and making money [sic].”

Let’s ignore, for now, the idea that “banging” a 22-year-old is perceived as a win and examine the broader criticism of Shakira here: she’s bitter. By offering up her own feelings about her romantic life – instead of leaving it to the media and the public – Shakira has deviated from the path we expect women to tread so carefully. Women often have good reason to feel bitter, so why does society shame them for expressing it?

“Bitter is a word casually and easily thrown about to dismiss a woman when she speaks, angrily or not,” says Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: the power of women’s anger.

In her book, Chemaly argues that women’s anger is never considered societally acceptable. “Teenage girls are spoiled, silly, or moody for standing up for themselves” whereas “older women, fed up and saying so, are bitter castrators.” I asked Chemaly whether she thinks Shakira’s age – at 45, she’s is ten years older than her ex-husband – is relevant to her percieved bitterness.

“I mean, how often do you hear a teenage girl, for example, referred to as ‘bitter’?” asks Chemaly.

She continued, “In this case, it’s easy to throw it into the conversation because of the disparity in age between the women involved. But, also, bitter implies a scowling face, ugliness, and unattractiveness. It’s tinged with the suggestion of depletion and exhaustion.”

In Rage Becomes Her, Chemaly also cites Edén E. Torres’s Chicana Without Apology: The New Chicana Cultural Studies, in which Torres highlights how “Latina women’s emotions are too-often disregarded due to stereotypes that paint them as “H๏τ-blooded and explosive.” It’s possible that as a Columbian woman, Shakira’s anger is being percieved through a fundamentally racist lens.

Academic literature has repeatedly highlighted that an essential function of the label “bitter” is to silence. Lynn McFall defines bitterness as “a refusal to forgive and forget,” adding that “You’re so bitter’ is condemnation, never praise … designed to silence the sufferer (via Losing Hope: Injustice and Moral Bitterness by Katie Stockdale).”

In Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression, Sue Campbell notes that the accusation of bitterness serves to  “block the strategy of anger by both shifting attention away from blameworthy behavior to the mode of expressing blame and by shifting the responsibility from the people who could do something about the blameworthy behavior to the expresser herself, who is now meant to account for her behavior.”

Katie Stockdale adds, “To call someone “bitter” is an accusation because it is ᴀssumed that the person is not merely angry but still angry and that the point of anger has expired. The accusation implies that the person ought to move on and let go.” Sound familiar?

If you’ve ever been through a break-up, you’ll know that – in the eyes of society, at least – your grief has an expiry date. There are only so many months you can spent rage-moping before your friends and family get sick of you. It’s time to move on! they optimistically announce, as they sling back the metaphorical curtains you’ve been languishing behind, dispose of the empty pizza boxes in your bed(room), and secretly sign you up for Channel 4’s First Dates.

As it happens, research suggests that women are good at moving on – better than men, in fact.

Research published in the Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences journal examined how post-relationship grief varied according to gender, finding that women experienced higher levels of emotional and physical stress than men. However, lead researcher Craig Morris told HealthDay that, “At some point, clearly, women get over a breakup […] They will discuss in great detail the pain, the suffering, the misery, but they are talking about it in the past.”

He added that women often “return to the dating scene in many ways better than they were before,” whereas men struggle to process breakups at all: “When you talk to a man about a breakup,” Morris said, “you can see he is still there. The anger. The disappointment. There was never any end to this for him. Most men never use the phrase, ‘I got over it.’”

There’s a subtle expectation that in the aftermath of a breakup, women should embark on a journey of self-improvement; they should heal; live their best lives; and outwardly demonstrate how they’ve channelled their pain into creating a better life for themselves and/or others. While it’s not the most harmful narrative in the world – it gave us Shout Out To My Ex, after all – women who fail to adhere to its narrow parameters are vulnerable to Sєxist commentary. See: Shakira being dubbed “bitter.”