![]() At some point one party, usually the regular person following it all, is left disappointed. Parasocial relationships-following someone prominent via the public sphere, getting involved to the point where very real emotions arise and stick-are tricky. What about the women who were older or founded B2B companies that weren’t easy to describe to the masses or who lived outside of the coasts or whose bodies didn’t fit into designer clothes or who didn’t bother paying a retainer for a publicist? They were made to appear accessible, but accessibility can backfire. “What about all the CEOs working hard who were people of color, or didn’t live on the coasts, or didn’t have consumer-facing products?” one female tech founder said to me with an eye roll when I asked her about the mania for girlbosses. Understanding what was wrong about the girlboss is less about identifying who was a girlboss but who was not included in the media narrative. ![]() “Gaslight every moment, gatekeep every day, girlboss beyond words,” the meme goes. “Girlboss” morphed from a term worthy of an eye roll to something more nefarious: shorthand for toxic white feminists. These women who were raised up as leaders were often young and inexperienced when they took on so much responsibility, which makes a great narrative. I’m not sure that prospective Glossier employees enjoyed it when Weiss asked them in interviews why they worked, as if work, for most people, was some kind of choice. It worked for the women propped up by it, but maybe not for anyone else. It was a way for a woman in business to talk about herself as an entrepreneur without having to pose for an elaborate fashion spread with her family or chat about her favorite perfume. But however cringeworthy the term, it had a certain utility. There was, it probably goes without saying, no boyboss equivalent. ![]() Girlboss was a demeaning moniker, something like the word hipster or the phrase Dimes Square that no one really wants to claim for themselves. So where have all of the girlbosses gone? The era is decidedly over, but many of its most emblematic figures, and those who aspired to their ranks, are still in their career-prime years. And now, by the time my book Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier is out this month, she has left the position of CEO of her company. Then there was Emily Weiss, maybe the girlbossiest of them all, whom I profiled for Vanity Fair in 2019, shortly after her beauty company, Glossier, was valued at over a billion dollars. A business version of a Real Housewives franchise. They were conventionally attractive, lived in major coastal cities, and were well-connected socially. Leandra Medine of Man Repeller, Steph Korey of the direct-to-consumer luggage brand Away, Yael Aflalo of Reformation, and Christene Barberich of Refinery29 loosely rounded out the cohort of young, mediagenic female founders of companies that often used messages of empowerment in their marketing. Outdoor Voices’ Tyler Haney was also on the cover of Inc., and on the cover of Domino too. Or it seemed like she was: Sophia Amoruso, founder of the clothing company Nasty Gal, posing on the cover of her 2014 bestseller #Girlboss Audrey Gelman of the women-only coworking space and social club The Wing photographed visibly pregnant on the cover of Inc.
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