You could practically see the T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase before it left Donald Trump’s mouth on Wednesday night: “Such a nasty woman.” The hashtag #nastywoman started trending almost immediately on Twitter. “From one nasty woman to another, you were an inspiration last night,” Nancy Pelosi tweeted at Clinton. “RT if you’re a nasty woman and it’s made your life a freakin’ pleasure,” wrote Lena Dunham; by midday Thursday, 3,000 or so women had done just that.

The supersaturation of these kinds of moments is such that the phrase might well be over and tired by tomorrow at noon. But then again, it might stick around, because of how well it suits, and reframes, the brand that is Hillary Clinton. It was the insult of her dreams: a rallying cry with more heat and emotion than any her campaign has generated in lo these many years. “I’m With Her” always risked sounding as if it was more about Clinton, as female candidate, than the person saying it. The women who are laying claim to being “nasty women,” by contrast, are not just announcing their support for Clinton. They are also identifying with an anger that she has rarely shown but they can imagine she feels. To describe yourself, with glee, as a nasty woman is a powerful unleashing, a refutation of all that girls are brought up to be: subservient, silent and accommodating, to the point of personal risk.

Clinton’s own careful control of her emotions has, of course, cost her. The public has sensed the effort that goes into her appearances, the careful titration of her comebacks for fear of appearing witchy or harsh or emasculating. And yet in trying to punish her for her more overt displays of hostility, with one interruption, Trump instantly turned harshness — fierceness — into a celebrated badge of honor.

At the debate, Clinton did seem to let loose a tougher, less insistently congenial version of herself than what she typically allows; even on the subject of late-term abortions, about which she has fallen over herself qualifying her commitment in the past, she did not back off. She spoke, passionately and with authority, about women in China and in Romania who did not have control over their reproductive rights.