Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Sen. Bernie Sanders wants women to stop paying for contraceptives that should be free, woman-founded Waabi raises $200 million for autonomous trucks, and author Samhita Mukhopadhyay reckons with what comes after the girlboss in an excerpt from her new book, The Myth of Making It. Have a thoughtful Juneteenth.
- After the girlboss. It’s easy to say the girlboss is dead. The term, originally coined by entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso, certainly is. It faced a reckoning in 2020, when a sprinkling of stories alleging toxic workplaces and racist behavior in women-led, mission-driven startups turned into a wave of high-profile exoduses from these companies including the Wing founder Audrey Gelman, Reformation founder Yael Aflalo, and Refinery29 founder Christene Barberich.
But is that the whole story? With the girlboss backlash, it felt like young women, heretofore encouraged to give in to unfettered ambition, were now being chastised for wanting to get ahead. Women in my life started to whisper about how some of the callouts, while justified, also felt unfairly targeted—more at the women’s ambition than at how they implemented it. “Why should I hide that I work hard?” said one. “I hope no one is ever interviewed about my management,” a former coworker said to me.
When our admiration for girlbosses started to unravel, I sighed with relief; I, too, was ready to do away with the ungodly pressure to be not just wildly successful but well-coiffed, thin, able-bodied, constantly motivated, and driven by purpose every moment of my life. But I also knew from my experience working with younger women that hustle culture was the water in which many of them—and especially women of color—swam. Young women believed working hard was the only way out of the conditions they were living in or were born into. For them, there were few alternatives.
Despite its many flaws (and being a little cheesy), the spirit of the girlboss—stripped of Instagram follower counts and untenable investment dollars—does provide an on-ramp for young women into bigger questions about their vision of career success that is cognizant of gender, equality, and justice. And I knew firsthand that many young women, especially the ones who were less privileged, needed to believe they could get ahead in order to do so.
The broad idea of a girlboss is in need of reinvention, not a funeral—one that is cognizant of its drawbacks but acknowledges its power and the need for an alternative path. The girlboss identity was, in part, a survival mechanism for women in a brutal and taxing work world that puts inordinate amounts of pressure on women to succeed and stereotypes them as not feminine enough when they do. But, like any other corporate feminism, it also functioned in part by convincing women that the onus is on them (and them alone) to make their lives better, rather than asking that we all work to change structural inequalities and fight together to better the lives of women.
Yes, we should critique a system that requires inhumane sacrifice disguised as aspiration. And we should certainly hold toxic, problematic, unethical leaders accountable. But the girlboss backlash makes clear that ambitious women still make people uncomfortable. It seems to say that there is something crass about wearing your ambition on your sleeve, and about being honest and forthcoming about wanting to change the economic circumstances that have been handed to you.
We know the “hustle harder” ethos of girlboss culture is not on its own the way to secure a feminist vision of equality worldwide, but it has also been one of the few paths out of marginalization for women—especially those often left out of economic progress. And as we push for equitable workplaces and continue to galvanize our collective power, it is imperative that we expand our definition of how women can make that happen.
From the book THE MYTH OF MAKING IT by Samhita Mukhopadhyay. Copyright © 2024 by Samhita Mukhopadhyay. Published by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay
thesamhita@gmail.com
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