When news broke in January that 37-year-old American Renee Good had been killed by a federal agent, many women felt a type of shock that was immediate and physical. That shock was followed by something far more familiar: the bodily knowledge of how quickly an encounter can turn dangerous and how much can hinge on the seconds that follow. Breathe. Don’t escalate. Stay calm.
Calm, as it so often is, becomes the thing to hold onto.
For many women, staying calm isn’t an instinct or a personality trait. It’s a skill honed over a lifetime, cultivated in the countless moments when authority feels unpredictable and safety feels fragile. From childhood, women are taught—explicitly and implicitly—that composure is a virtue, and that emotional expression risks being labeled as hysteria, instability, or irrationality.
The “crazy” woman has long been used to discredit women’s pain, undermine credibility, and justify the dismissal of experiences. Calm, by contrast, is rewarded: at home, at work, in public, in moments of conflict. Women learn that to be taken seriously, to avoid escalation, to protect themselves and others, they must remain composed—even when circumstances are unjust, frightening, or violent.
This expectation is far from neutral. It is deeply gendered and historically enforced.
Calm becomes a survival strategy, policing women’s emotions as strictly as their bodies. In particularly precarious situations—domestic abuse, immigration enforcement, or encounters with law enforcement—remaining composed is less about serenity than risk calculation. Women know that raising their voice, crying, panicking, or resisting can be used against them. For those facing government authority—particularly women of color, immigrant women, and mothers—calm is armor. It is a way to stay legible, nonthreatening, and alive in systems never designed for women’s safety.
In communities shaped by federal law enforcement, restraint, composure, and de-escalation are a way of life. Now, as federal presence expands to more cities in the wake of high-profile incidents, women across the country are learning what others have long known: Calm can protect—even when it comes at a personal cost. But staying calm does not mean staying silent or inactive.
Glamour spoke with women from communities familiar with federal enforcement—and those encountering it recently—about what they’ve seen and felt, and what needs to change.
Angelina, college student, El Paso
On June 11, I went downtown to the federal courthouse. A friend and I brought posters and joined a group that was already protesting outside. Inside the building, they didn’t allow recording, flags or signs, so my friend and I decided to stay outside.
What we didn’t know at the time was that people were being detained inside. When we walked around to the other side of the building, we saw families crying and screaming. We approached one woman who was sitting hunched over on the sidewalk with her daughter. She was crying so hard that she was hyperventilating. Her daughter, who couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, explained to us in Spanish that her stepdad had just been detained and was now being deported.
It was heartbreaking seeing someone so young explain a reality like that. You could tell she wanted to cry, too, but instead she was consoling her mom. It was incredibly difficult to witness without getting emotional. As we kept walking along the building, we saw ICE trucks and agents loading detainees and driving through a small garage area.
At that time the ICE presence wasn’t nearly as bad as it is now. I feel scared now, especially because I’m hijabi and I know that I don’t “look American” to them.
At first it looked like raids on farm workers, warehouses, and downtown LA. Now it’s anyone selling flowers, the elote man, gardeners, people driving certain trucks. If you look brown, you’re questioned.
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