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.
