Distant reading case study III
(Re-)imagening female entrepreneurs - the Girl Boss movement and its critics
Introduction to the Girl Boss movement and recent backlashes
The "Girl Boss" movement, prominently shaped by Sophia Amoruso in her 2014 autobiography #GIRLBOSS, emerged in the mid-2010s. The movement was a celebration of female empowerment in the corporate world, especially on social media. Under the hashtag #GirlBoss and similar slogans such as #SheLeads, women posted about their entrepreneurial efforts and their ambitions to succeed in male-dominated industries, often combining feminist rhetoric with business jargon and personal branding.
Despite its initial popularity, the movement has faced backlash, especially when key figures such as Sophia Amoruso were criticised for harsh treatment of employees and creating cultures of intimidation around them. Moreover, several start-ups created by "girl bosses" at the time ran into financial difficulties. Examples are Sophia Amoruso's fashion business Nasty Gal and The Wing, a women-focused social club and co-working space. Critics have since argued that the "girl boss" image promotes a superficial, materialistic and exclusionary version of feminism whose focus on individual success betrays feminist solidarity and the fight for system change. The term has also been criticized for "commodifying feminism" and ignoring gender inequality as well as challenges of intersectionality.
Leigh Stein's satirical novel Self Care, based on the writer's own experiences as the co-founder of an online community for women during the 2010s, demonstrates through fiction how the #girlboss narrative can lead to self-exploitation and the exploitation of others. Similarly, an article in The Atlantic, published in 2020, critically analysed the movement's rhetoric. In July 2020, Business Insider welcomed the fall of the #girlboss phenomenon, arguing that its decline is beneficial for promoting more sustainable and inclusive forms of feminism in the workplace. Forbes, in June 2022, also claimed that "female entrepreneurs welcome the end of the girlboss era - once and for all".
However, it is not entirely clear what exactly the post-#girlboss business woman should look like. The Dutch ELLE wondered in July 2022 what might come next, now that the #girlboss is (at least officially) dead, but could not provide a clear answer. After all, the Covid pandemic seems to have led to a certain revival of the "career queen" ethos. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett's piece in The Guardian, published in 2022 claims that the "girlboss culture" is, post-pandemic, "more ubiquitous than ever."