It was the grind. It was the hustle. It was 6am Soul Cycle and smug abs shots and back-to-back meetings in sleek boardrooms. It was Instagram posts of box fresh designer handbags shrouded in tissue paper – forget #boydonegood, #thisgirldonegood. It was SHE.E.Os and MLM businesses conducted via Facebook. And it was burnout and bullying and systemic racism and unacknowledged privilege and boasting about being too busy for lunch.
Girlboss culture was — and for those who didn’t get the memo and still cling to it, still is — an utter nightmare. A potted history goes something like this: in 2014 entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso — founder of $100 million fashion empire Nasty Gal — wrote a memoir entitled #Girlboss which essentially posited that women could and should make a power grab at work in the name of equality. Described by Lena Dunham as “more than a book... #Girlboss is a movement” it was critically acclaimed and a bestseller before becoming a Netflix comedy series. It was a story of an empowered women with the aim of empowering other women. Noble, yes, but it also failed to examine how power structures are formed at the most essential levels.
This resulted in the movement being accused of embodying ‘white women feminism’ (this new found power did not typically include intersectionality with women of colour), privilege, toxic working environments, Boot Strap Theory [a capitalist idea that hard work always pays off regardless of where people started from).
Millennial women starting out in their careers were promised everything — as long as they were prepared to sacrifice. Staying late (no one noticed when you did, everyone noticed if you didn’t), never turning your phone off, replying to emails at midnight, not feeling able to take a day off due to sickness, being told extra tasks with no financial compensation were an “opportunities” — all of this is classic Girlboss culture.
And then, it began to crumble. In 2016 Nasty Girl was sued for discrimination (an employee filed a lawsuit stating she got fired for getting pregnant) and went bankrupt with Amoruso personally blasted for showing poor leadership skills — a far cry from the confident prose that filled her book.
Meanwhile The Wing, a private, women-only members club which by 2019 had some 11 branches in the US and one in central London — which opened with much feminist fanfare with portraits of Michelle Obama and Phoebe Waller-Bridge on the walls and a colour scheme anchored in Millennial Pink — was under scrutiny for multiple allegations of racism. Claims of poor pay for black or immigrant staff and a culture of rich white women talking down to everyone else flew in the face of The Wing’s intersectional feminism ethos. By summer 2022 what one of its founders had called a ‘feminist utopia’ was no more.
Last year Kim Kardashian caused mass outrage when she said, “I have the best advice for women in business. Get your f*cking a** up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days”. This full throttle Girlboss dogma saw her accused of hyposcrisy as well as lacking in empathy.
A combination of questions raised about systemic racism following the death of George Floyd, the increased popularity of TikTok and Be Real — both platforms where perfectionism is neither expected nor prized —and the fallout from COVID-19, has meant that society has wised up to the hypocrisy of performative inclusivity and of the unsavoury axis where capitalism meets feminism.
“With the pandemic causing widespread job loss and economic insecurity, many have had to re-evaluate what success means and prioritise resilience and adaptability over traditional notions of success,” explains Elle Mace, a positive psychology coach.
But, just as one female archetype departs another pops up, like sexist Whac-A-Mole. Please welcome to the stage: Girlfailure.
With 3.4million views on TikTok and counting, she is the antidote to the Facetuned perfectionism of the Millennial Girlboss; in other words a chaotic, hot mess. She is flawed — and not just in that late 90s romantic comedy plot way, where the ‘flaw’ is something like wearing braces or being bad at baking. She has major personality flaws — lying, cheating, mean spiritedness — and her mistakes (betraying loved ones, walking out on children) give you acute second-hand anxiety.
Notable Girlfailures on TV are Fleabag, all the women in Girls, Suzie Pickles in I Hate Suzie and Rachel in Fleishman is in Trouble. Then, IRL you’ve got a brace of con artist Girlfailures in Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes — both now iconic for their botched attempts at being Girlbosses.
But far from being a reprehensible villain, Girlfailure evokes sympathy and affection: we understand her. There is no filter and no good vibes only. In fact, the vibes are often pretty bad. She hasn’t manifested her good fortune. She isn’t the Patron Saint of Happy Endings. She doesn’t say stuff like “I worked my ass off to get here!” while forgetting all the other leg-ups that also got her there. She is never smug – except maybe when delivering a skilful zinger. We’re done with perfection and looking for relatability and Girlfailure delivers in spades. It’s Gemma Collins saying “I get costrophobic” or falling through the stage at the Brit awards. It’s Celeste Barber in bad lighting doing impressions of Emily Ratajkowski. It’s Alison Hammond being chased down the street by Italian police while filming for This Morning.
But there’s definitely a case for pausing before applauding it as the major antiperfectionism win for women.
Firstly, the label plays into the idea that women are only comfortable with other women when they slip up. And while occasional schadenfreude is not only natural but totally delicious, to need it on tap in order to shore up one’s sense of self doesn’t seem particularly healthy.
Failure is the key to growth — we all know this by now even if it still stings — and yet Girlfailure is not allowed to ‘succeed’. Not really. Yes, she can have the journey — some tiny peaks and subterranean troughs but her baseline must always be the rock bottom that makes others feel better about their own paltry offerings. Do we want to see Girlfailure win one day? I’m not sure we do. And this is the root of the issue.
“When we see imperfection on show by others around us, and their life, reputation or integrity remains intact, it gives us permission to accept and show imperfection ourselves,” says Marios Georgiou, counsellor at Private Therapy Clinic in London.
Secondly, labels like Girlfailure are baldly sexist. “I run and have run successful businesses, but that makes me a boss, not a #Girlboss,” says Hannah Campbell at One Twelve Agency, which specialises in Gen Z and cultural marketing. “I just don’t see the need to gender it, where are all the #manbosses?”
And for that matter, the #guyfailures?
It’s a question Georgiou raises. “Wouldn’t a woman stand to gain from a #guyfailure moment as much as she would a #girlfailure moment and vice-versa? If so, what’s the point of adding the first half of the label at all?”
Girlfailure also fosters competion — or at least the idea that everything must be categorised as either a success or failure, without considering the gulf of variables inbetween. “If you over-focus on success as something that defines your worth that’s where the problems creep in,” explains Georgiou. “Suddenly you are not worthy of love and appreciation unless you are performing well enough by these standards.”
What is really interesting, however, is how elements of Girlfailure are used disingenuously by those who want to harness its relatability factor.
“If you’re not relatable, you’re not going to bring the crowds,” explains Charlotte Mair, founder of influencer marketing agency The Fitting Room. “If you are a #girlfailure, people might be able to stand you actually being successful…”
This is why we’re seeing brilliant women who have absolutely got their lives together in every single way presents snippets of themselves as hectic liabilities. It’s right there in the surprised “who, me?” energy of women cos playing at being familiar with financial instability, unfulfilled dreams and frequent rejection. Using it as a prop to maintain relatability and friendships is, well, a bit of a covert Girlboss move.
But mainly, the problem with Girlfailure (and Girlboss) is how such labels at face value offer community and acceptance but underneath force women into simplistic categories — overachiever or hot mess — when most of our lives are a whole lot more nuanced.
