I have to say it: I hate the phrase “girlboss.”
I don’t know where or when my hatred originated, but it’s stuck around throughout my college years. When I first considered my disdain for the phrase, I was immediately suspicious that some sort of internalized sexism was at work. Why shouldn’t I be proud to be a professional woman? I worked hard to accomplish my goals, and I’d always been a self-proclaimed feminist, so it didn’t make any sense to me that the phrase would seem so laughable. Maybe, then, it was coming from some culturally ingrained distaste for femininity in the workplace. But as someone who unabashedly adores pink notebooks and sticker-filled planners, I quickly realized this wasn’t just some aesthetic aversion to glitter-encrusted slogan tees — there was something more underneath.
Upon discussing this topic with other women my age, I noticed one immediate trend among those of us with negative perceptions of #GirlBoss culture: it’s association with multi-level marketing. These corporations basically take feminist ideas of self-determination and self-sufficiency and weaponize them into tools for recruiting new salespeople. You don’t have to look any further than their own websites for the evidence: LulaRoe, one of the most notorious MLMs, promises its potential sales partners that they’ll get to “be your own boss” while joining a community of “confident, empowered individuals.”
Despite these promises, a 2018 report found that only one in four MLM participants reported making a profit, with almost half reporting they’d actually lost money to the venture. Promises of financial independence, sisterhood, and general #GirlBoss-ery are used to lure in and take advantage of vulnerable women, something that understandably leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of any woman who feels she’s been wronged by one of these corporations (or at the very least, one who’s dealt with endless “hey girly!” sales pitches from old acquaintances clogging up their DMs).
For me, though, my relationship with the term goes beyond the MLM world. I see “girlboss” as a phrase that was once intended as a source of feminine pride shifting into one of feminine othering. This is a very personal opinion, and I think it’s important to note that not every woman or businesswoman would agree. Some find a sense of belonging in the “girlboss” community. It’s empowering to have their femininity recognized and celebrated in the business world, which is why you’ll most often see the terms used by women, for women — it’s their way of sharing that feeling of potential and accomplishment.
It’s because of this that I have a begrudging admiration for women who can call themselves girlbosses with sincerity — it’s not all insidious corporate plotting, sometimes it’s just pride in overcoming obstacles to success imposed by sexism. But I find that celebratory sisterhood is overshadowed by my desire to be seen in professional contexts not as a member of a gendered group, but as an individual. When I’m labeled “girlboss,” I don’t feel like a CEO, an entrepreneur, a professional. I am made as another — a She-EO, an EntrepreneHER, a Boss Babe. It feels patronizing and infantilizing — Lord knows I’ve never seen any man referred to as a “boy boss.” Because, to the rest of the world, he’s just a boss — no qualifier necessary. At this point in my life and in the environments I find myself in, I’d much rather be seen as an individual worthy of equal evaluation and respect based on my merits, rather than someone defined by my gender or as a representative of women as a whole.
When I look beyond my own relationship with the term, I find that “girlboss” and all its accompanying aesthetics are a prime example of the commodification of feminism in the 21st century. What was maybe once a term used to differentiate women who stepped up and asserted themselves within male-dominated spaces has been watered down, sugarcoated into something that can be slapped on a pastel-pink water bottle. In a cheapening of what was once a meaningful and powerful social movement, we see a reduction of years of struggle and oppression into catchy phrases used to push products. It’s marketing, white feminism, fluffy filler, empty of intersectional understanding. It represents a perspective that is outdated and short-sighted — frankly, it’s a label that feels starkly out of place in a society currently tackling much broader and more insidious forms of discrimination. In her article in The Atlantic, I feel Amanda Hull describes the myopic perspective of #GirlBoss feminism quite elegantly:
“When a country is grappling with mass death, racist state violence, and the unemployment and potential homelessness of millions of people, it becomes inescapably clear that when women center their worldview around their own office hustle, it just re-creates the power structures built by men, but with women conveniently on top.”
There you have it — “girlboss” is the lip gloss over the ugly maw of systemic violence and oppression. Performative feminism gives the illusion of progressiveness, all the while perpetuating the same harmful systems as before. A woman-owned oil company is still contributing to carbon emissions. A female cop who is complicit in police brutality is no less culpable than her male counterparts. It seems that corporations use representation as a smokescreen, allowing them to avoid tackling other pressing issues while simultaneously patting themselves on the back for fulfilling their “wokeness” quota. Coming from a place that’s critical of capitalism and its inherent structural inequality, it’s easy to understand why so many progressive and leftist women see “girlboss” culture as irrelevant and even damaging. If you found yourself being saddled with a label that was used to perpetuate systems directly in conflict with your own priorities and values, wouldn’t you be a little irritated?
The cultural thread of the “girlboss” — and for that matter, the entire thread of feminism under capitalism — is a long and winding one, and not one that can be fully fleshed out and explored in the span of a single article. I invite you to dig deeper, read more, write more on the topic, and see where it leads you — I certainly will. But whatever your politics or opinions are, I hope you can see why, just maybe, I don’t want my professional accomplishments or work ethic to be associated with Forever 21 tees.