The Girlboss (as We Know Her) Is Cancelled!
Sophia Amoruso put an Instagram filter on the American dream, redefining the parameters of ‘having it all’ as a millennial woman. The fashion entrepreneur built the Nasty Gal empire from a vintage eBay site in her twenties, trademarking the term Girlboss with her 2014 memoir #Girlboss. The quintessential symbol of web 2.0, Amoruso’s hashtag ushered a new echelon of direct-to-consumer womenswear brands, backed by aspirational SheEOs and continuous rounds of venture capital funding.
Girlboss entrepreneurs emerged from the ruins of the 2008 financial crisis; a proverbial setting considering that 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies were also founded during a recession. Graduating into an unstable job market and crippled by student debt, millennial women became obsessed with the prospect of establishing a career — latching onto Girlbosses who modeled hustling as less of a financial necessity and more of an aspirational lifestyle.
More than a decade on, the progressive young women who bankrolled Girlboss companies have largely outgrown the #feminist ideology. Consumers have zeroed in on brands that champion white, female ambition as radical, and exposed CEOs who perpetuated toxic company cultures — Amoruso among them. In 2015, she was sued for allegedly firing three pregnant Nasty Gal employees due to depart on maternity leave; an accusation that hotly contested the brand’s girl power image.
At the helm of a new financial crisis, Sophia Amoruso is launching her next business venture; an eight-week entrepreneurial course with an aviation theme, aptly named Business Class. The course will be divided into seven modules or ‘flights’ and students will be able to connect through a private app called ‘The Lounge’.
Flying business class is affiliated with status, luxury, and comfort, enabling passengers to work en-route and to be well-rested and productive upon landing. Business class is a fitting metaphor for the hyper-acceleration underpinning Girlboss culture, in which every moment presents an opportunity for upgrade and optimisation.
Amoruso has pledged 100 Business Class scholarships to underrepresented founders, and bonus modules will focus on ‘understanding unconscious bias’ and ‘building an inclusive empire’.
Is Business Class an attempt to reconfigure the exclusionary parameters of her ‘empowering’ Girlboss — one that felt relentlessly disempowering to marginalised women? Or is the newly-woke Girlboss 2.0 merely a strategic reinvention by Sophia Amoruso, to capitalise on the evolving social consciousness of her consumer?
What does it say of a society that we look to businesswomen, rather than governments, to be activists for political change?
The Aspirational Girlboss
The #Girlboss memoir, and the eponymous Netflix series it inspired, charters Amoruso’s rise from a romanticized vision of privileged poverty (dumpster diving for bagels in a glam-rock outfit) to fronting Forbes magazine under the headline of ‘America’s richest self-made women’.
In the Netflix series, pre-success Sophia is depicted as brash and immature. She’s unclear about her purpose in life, but convinced of her own fabulousness! Her illusions of self-grandeur ultimately come to fruition while having sex on a bed of hundred dollar bills; a cinematic trademark that she has indeed made it! John Steinbeck wrote that ‘socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires’. Naturally, Amoruso’s vintage-to-riches story solidifies the belief within her consumers that they too will dissolve into millionaire Girlbosses someday.
As social media has evolved to dominate every facet of American culture, businesswomen backed by cult online followings have been instrumental in broadcasting and disseminating a collective image of female ambition. As Girlboss prototypes, the Kardashian–Jenners have been successfully translated their reality TV viewership and social media followings into loyal customers of their affiliate brands, including; Kylie Cosmetics, SKIMS, KKW Beauty, and Good American jeans.
Alongside them is a plentitude of millennial founders framed by feminist intentions; Glossier’s Emily Weiss, Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine, The Wing’s Audrey Gelman, AWAY’s Stepanie Korey, THINX underwear’s Miki Agrawal, and dare I say, Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes; who have cultivated a brand image so aspirational, their products are, by comparison, rendered insignificant.
The Attainable Girlboss
In anticipation of the launch of Business Class, I signed up for an entrepreneurial seminar hosted by Sophia Amoruso, alongside 2,000 other buzzing women from around the globe. In the chat, they typed the countries they were watching from (Brazil! Argentina! Australia!), linked their small-business Instagram accounts, and gushed variations of ‘I’ve read your book and it’s my bible!!’ The seminar (which veritably passed as an hour-long advertisement for Business Class) opened with Amoruso reminiscing on the day she traded in her beat-up 1970-something wagon for a luxury model car.
Luxury cars are aspiration frequently incentivised by multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs) to exploit the ambitions that everyday women have of becoming successful. The grandmother of MLMs; Mary Kay initiated this trend in the 1950s by offering its best salespeople a dreamy pink Cadillac. Today, the highest performing independent consultants at Arbonne can drive away in a white Mercedes, (so long as they maintain their qualifying level of sales each month).
MLMs recruit new members by slandering stable, full-time employment as dull and unexciting, and offering up their nauseating brand of vision board feminism, concerned with ‘cultivating your dream life’ and ‘building your empire’ as an upgrade. As Christopher Lasch prophetically writes in The Culture of Narcissism,
‘the media give substance to, and thus intensify, self-centred dreams of fame and glory, encourage common people to identify themselves with the stars and to hate the ‘herd,’ and make it more and more difficult for them to accept the banality of everyday existence’.
You’ve probably been introduced to the world of MLMs through a ‘Boss Babe’ from your hometown. MLMs exploit the desire that women have for financial independence, by promoting a flexible work-from-home schedule that preys upon stay-at-home mums, disabled and chronically ill women, and those looking for a side-hustle. Given that women account for the majority of MLM consultants, and that 99% of consultants end up losing money, this avenue to becoming a Girlboss actually masks an exploitative system that perpetuates a gender wage gap, by essentially co-opting the language and imagery of feminism for profit.
The Rise of the Working Poor
The 2008 global financial crisis has seen the nine-to-five workday steadily being replaced by a multi-hyphenated career economy. Millennials have been dubbed a generation of ‘slashies’, a term that transcends across Girlboss matriarchs like socialite/model/businesswoman/DJ Paris Hilton to a fangirl patching together a retail job, a makeup business, and an Etsy store. ‘The ideal woman has always been conceptually overworked,’ writes Jia Tolentino in her essay, Always be Optimising. Under accelerated capitalism, however, we’re not just overworked. We are subsumed by a social system that reinforces the feeling that we should be working nonstop.
The generational paranoia around repaying student loans has driven millennials to contemplate their recreational hobbies as potentially monetisable ‘side hustles’. This is further amplified by the hyper-visibility of social media, with every minute of our time becoming optimised online as evidence of self. The collective sense of millennial burnout is a modern crisis — driven, in part, by the Girlboss philosophy that advocates hustling as a badge of honour.
And yet, the more efficient we are, the worse our jobs seem to become. Low wages. Lacking security. No retirement benefits. No advancement potential. Irregular hours that redistribute our downtime into micro-installments. Sustaining an ‘only a slack away’ culture, blurring the boundaries between working and not. The disruption of the pandemic has only exacerbated how ill-equipped we are to cope with economic collapse under the gig economy.
The worse things become for Americans, the more they turn their blame inward, internalising it as a personal failure. ‘Poor Americans are urged to hate themselves’, writes Kurt Vonnegut, and the more they hate themselves, the more they are driven to optimise. This has given rise to what economists are calling the ‘working poor’ aka the 12 million Americans working full-time hours who fall below the poverty line. Considering that black people in the U.S. have been burnt out for hundreds of years, the side effects of millennial burnout are only intensified among black women. Today, 56 percent of the U.S. ‘working poor’ are black.
The ‘I’ in Girlboss Isn’t Going Anywhere
Growing up, millennials were taught to be self-reliant and to make decisions on their own terms. In the workplace, millennials prefer to have their individual accomplishments rewarded by their employer, rather than being recognised as part of a larger group effort. According to the World Values Survey, American millennials would prefer to live in a meritocracy (where wealth is distributed according to personal achievement), as opposed to an egalitarian society (where the gap between the rich and poor is narrower, regardless of personal achievement).
Social media further rewards businesswomen with individualistic goals of wealth, recognition, wellness, and success. This is intrinsic to the Girlboss philosophy which glorifies the accomplishments of a single founder, rather than the collective efforts of those who helped to build the company or run the operations day-to-day.
Individualistic attitudes are a product of late-stage capitalism and white supremacist hustle culture. Capitalism and white supremacy are inextricably linked. The coloniser mindset is competitive, egocentric, and greedy, while the Indigenous mindset is unified, cooperative, and empathetic. They work together for a collective good. The remedies to millennial burnout are not individualistic and economic — they are collective and political.
Work Hard, Manifest Harder
Instead of collective and political solutions, Girlboss communities have been awash with manifesting success. Manifestation focuses on setting intentions, visualising goals, and attracting dreams into your life through self-belief. As one Arbonne consultant, Melissa Bond shares,
‘Our fears are merely a manifestation, therefore are not real. We can CHOOSE to either face everything and run OR FACE EVERYTHING AND RISE!’.
Statistics show, however, that this is not the case for women facing economic, social, and cultural marginalisation. Here, I am referring to people of colour, trans and non-binary people (who identify with women’s communities), Indigenous people, LGB people, disabled people, and working-class people.
Manifestation is evangelised by white women on Instagram (without any acknowledgment of their privilege) who have been able to ‘achieve their dreams’, reinforcing a belief that systematic inequality can be overcome by simply ‘facing everything and rising’. Marginalised women who succeed despite a system structurally designed for them to fail, are exceptional outliers with ‘black girl magic’. As Tiana Clark writes for Buzzfeed,
‘[Black girls] must harness magic to succeed and thrive through this bullshit’.
For the marginalised women whose dreams are unmet, the focus of our intentions should be to dismantle the system that oppresses them, rather than attributing their failure to perceived deficiencies like not manifesting hard enough.
The Intersectional Girlboss
Taking the observation that black women are subjected to racism by an overwhelmingly white feminist movement, critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw developed a theoretical framework for mapping the ways that social and political identity overlaps to create experiences of discrimination and privilege. She devised the term ‘intersectionality’ in 1989. Without an intersectional lens, female-led businesses such as the networking space (and Girlboss incubator) The Wing end up perpetuating systems of inequality.
An expose published by Jezebel reveals that numerous black kitchen hands at The Wing’s Chicago location did not receive FOB keys required for entering the buildings, unlike their white counterparts. This issue was brought to the attention of HQ after a black employee was approached by police while waiting to be buzzed in. In the U.S., black people are disproportionately targeted for perceived loitering. And yet, their requests made by the employees were repeatedly denied, resulting in their resignation.
Scroll through the vertical slew of performatively woke Instagram content and it’s forgivable to deduce that The Wing is a company committed to its black employees. In light of the death of George Floyd and the racial revolution it’s evoked, I find myself wincing as I watch corporations signaling their ‘goodness’ to consumers through online spectacles of anti-racist ideology. Under capitalism, no human rights movement is too sacred to avoid being embraced for profit.
The devil works hard but millennial marketing works harder.
While social media ally ship aids in bringing the harsh realities of police brutality to the forefront of the American conscience, it also allows businesses to pay lip service to their consumer’s values. Acknowledging the existence of systematic discrimination through ‘demanding justice’ or ‘standing against police brutality’ is not the same as resisting it. While many Girlboss corporations, The Wing included, can read the room and acknowledge their ethical misgivings once the pressure is applied, they often show no vested interest in unpacking the racial and class barriers within their companies that marginalise black women. This kind of allyship takes longer than the 30 seconds needed to hit post.
Canceling the Girlboss
Mainstream feminism has been shaped by political urgency and the evolving social consciousness of consumers. The first time I felt this was following the inauguration of President Donald Trump. In 2016, millions of women collectively marched on cities across America, in fear of persecution under the Trump administration, and I found myself in a hot-pink sea of ‘pussy hats’ among them.
The same day President Trump won the U.S. election, Nasty Gal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
This shift in mainstream feminism has seen female consumers demanding greater accountability from corporations, with offensive or discriminatory behavior coalescing in their canceling. ‘Cancel culture’ was Macquarie Dictionary’s 2019 Word of the Year. However, the term ‘canceled’ parlays as far back to the civil rights movement, as an expression of black empowerment.
Canceling a Girlboss today usually involves boycotting her brand, demanding her resignation, and essentially de-platforming her by stripping away her cultural capital. Cancel culture has faced criticism for its tendency to sustain a good versus evil binary — placing a woman on an untouchable feminist pedestal or demonising her entirely.
Consumers are more likely to cancel Girlbosses in the aftermath of ethical failures, according to MarketWatch, because they contest the ‘communal’ qualities that women are traditionally affiliated with like selflessness, warmth, and relatability. Consumers unconsciously hold women to higher altruistic standards, although they benefit much more in business much from possessing self-interested or ‘agentic’ traits.
In the introduction of her memoir, Sophia Amoruso describes #Girlboss as a ‘feminist book’ and Nasty Gal as ‘a feminist company’. It’s interesting that Amoruso, who spends the next 200 pages without any further mention of women (beyond herself), or the ways that women can help each other to succeed in enterprise, has come to be recognised as the figurehead of millennial feminism.
‘If this is a man’s world, who cares? I’m still really glad to be a girl in it’— Sophia Amoruso
The success of Sophia Amoruso as a businesswoman is empowering for Sophia. It’s not empowering for the women who were laid off from Nasty Gal for falling pregnant. It’s not empowering for the exploited garment workers who produced her clothing and were rendered invisible under her success. By claiming to dismantle the oppressive structures that she’s perpetuating, Amoruso’s Girlboss philosophy has rearticulated feminism to be about celebrating the success stories of women who have confounded male-power structures (Glossier! Reformation! AWAY!). Oftentimes, by being just as ruthless and self-serving as men in power. Individualism does nothing to dismantle the power structures that oppress marginalised women . It actually reinforces them.
As a society, social progressiveness will never be achieved so long as it’s attached to a product or service that we must pay for. This hit me at the height of Nasty Gal’s success. On a holiday to Los Angeles in 2015, I detoured my nine-person family away from Adam Sandler’s house and towards the Nasty Gal store on Melrose. It wasn’t until I got inside that I realised it really was just that. A store. Rather than equal pay, reproductive rights or gender equality, (movements I’d unconsciously attached with Nasty Gal), it was racks of studded leather jackets and ‘Pussy Power’ tee shirts.
As millennials, it feels like we’ve become so desperate for corporations to align with social movements — we collectively impeach CEOs who fail in their humanitarian pursuits, because we have lost faith in our government institutions to enact social change.
