In much simpler times, the word “girlboss” could be taken as a compliment, like the noun version of “You go, girl!” It was plastered on sweatshirts and mugs. But today, calling someone a girlboss is no longer high praise. Even left-leaning women’s publications have abandoned the girlboss. “Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” is a popular meme poking fun at women who pretend to be girl’s girls in order to climb the ladder of success.
So what happened? When did the girlboss become anathema? Well, multiple fraudsters definitely played a part, with disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes being the most infamous. However, Gen Z’s rejection of the girlboss and embrace of “lazy girl jobs” may not be much of an improvement.
“It’s such a predictable pendulum swing from one generation to the next,” Rebekah Merkle, author of Eve in Exile: The Restoration of Femininity, told Evie Magazine. “But it doesn’t mean that they’re any closer to the right answer. I do think that the women sacrificing everything for their careers – that was a bad idea. These people have at least got that figured out, that that was a bad idea, but they’re just pursuing another bad idea.”
Who Created the Girlboss?
The term “girlboss” was popularized by Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso in the mid-2010s as she built her fashion empire and published her memoir, #Girlboss, which sold more than 500,000 copies. Amoruso has defined “girlboss” in a pretty anodyne way – a girlboss is “someone who has big dreams and is willing to work hard for them,” she told Elle in 2014.
“So being a Girl Boss is really about being the boss of your own life,” Amoruso said.
Taking charge of your life seems like a positive enough message. But there’s something darker under the self-focused attitude of the girlboss. Although not a fraudster herself, Amoruso has a legacy that’s a mixed bag – Nasty Gal filed for bankruptcy in 2016, but she continued to capitalize on her earlier success, creating a new company called Girlboss Media to create podcasts, host conferences, and more.
Amoruso wanted to be the next Oprah, she told CNBC in 2017. But that doesn’t appear to have happened. The girlboss zeitgeist was already on its way out.
Feminism and Fraud?
Amoruso looks like an angel compared to some of the other women associated with the term “girlboss,” though. Holmes, once a promising Stanford student, is now serving an 11-year prison sentence after her biotech startup was revealed to be a total fraud.
The media was eager to prop up Holmes when she burst onto the scene. Fortune put her (and her trademark black turtleneck) on the cover in 2014, and Forbes, USA Today, and Glamour followed the magazine’s lead with their own glowing coverage. Only one reporter saw through Holmes’ facade – John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal, who later wrote a book about Holmes titled Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.
“Her emergence tapped into the public’s hunger to see a female entrepreneur break through in a technology world dominated by men,” Carreyrou wrote. “Women like Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg had achieved a measure of renown in Silicon Valley, but they hadn’t created their own companies from scratch. In Elizabeth Holmes, the Valley had its first female billionaire tech founder.”
You’d think these media outlets would have learned their lesson after Carreyrou revealed Holmes’ outright lies – to both the public and her own board. The technology she claimed was going to save the world didn’t exist. Yet a 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 pick named Charlie Javice allegedly used the same playbook to net herself millions. Javice made tens of millions of dollars after JPMorgan acquired her college financial aid company Frank in 2021. But just two years later, Javice was indicted on charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy. She has been accused of claiming her site had millions of users when, in reality, it only had a few hundred thousand, NBC News reported.
Gen Z Doesn’t Want the Girlboss Life
The numbers don’t lie: Gen Z women don’t see themselves as corporate girlbosses. So many women were interested in the topic of “lazy girl jobs” that it was trending on TikTok earlier this year. (For the uninitiated, a lazy girl job is a remote, salaried position that’s so easy you can do your work in a few hours each day.) Videos using the hashtag #lazygirljob show women taking extra long coffee breaks, getting their nails done, and watching Netflix during their workdays.
So what’s the solution for women caught between these two extremes? Aiming for the C-suite certainly isn’t the answer, says Carmel Richardson, contributing editor at The American Conservative (check out her recent essay on tradwife influencers).
“Both the girlboss mentality and the lazy girl mentality are degrading to women,” Richardson told Evie Magazine. “The solution to the soul sucking 9-to-5 grind is not to pursue further emptiness by way of slothfulness. Instead, we should seek ways to return to the types of work that have historically proven most fulfilling to intelligent women: nurturing, homemaking, and creative roles.”
There’s so much scope for being a high-achieving woman that is outside the corporate world.
Merkle’s book (which she also turned into a documentary) traces feminism’s seemingly innocuous roots to show how it created an upside-down world where women are encouraged to sacrifice children and marriage in order to climb the corporate ladder.
“It’s in women’s nature to be hard-working, highly effective, incredibly potent – all of those things,” Merkle said. “The thing I hope women take away from my book is that there’s so much scope for being a high-achieving woman that is outside the corporate world. I feel like that’s the ‘lazy girl’ thing – they’re still buying into the corporate world, they’re just not trying to be high-achieving anymore.”
“There is so much scope, but you just have to be able to push past all the lies about it. … If women managed to cut through the propaganda and embrace their roles, I think it would be shocking what would happen,” she continued.
Even though pop culture encourages women to choose between hustle culture or hedonism, they should look to the anti-girlbosses in their lives. Both Merkle and Richardson cited their mothers as examples of the lives women should aspire to.
“My own mother is probably my favorite example of an ‘anti-girlboss,” Richardson said. “She put aside a lucrative career to stay home and raise myself and my five siblings, without complaint, bitterness, or regret. It's one thing to leave your career for the sake of your children, but it is another thing entirely to do that willingly and joyfully, and she did.”
Whether your goal is to become a stay at home mom or not, there are ways to lean into your femininity without taking on the persona of a "girl boss" or an equally unfulfilling "lazy girl."
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