Who Is A Girlboss And Why We Don't Aspire To Be Her

Who Is A Girlboss? To put it plainly, a girlboss is a woman of privilege who posts #girlpower in her social media posts. Puts 'feminist in her bio. And has no time to care about how many people she exploits because she is making money and "representing" women in the male dominating world.

She is not necessarily a bad person but can surely become the inspiration for grey female characters in big-budget movies who have all the reasons to justify their bad behaviour. Her father paid her bills but she didn't want him to. She talks ill about other women but they hurt her first. She goes around town bashing men for calling her out because once a cute little guy broke her heart. Of course, she is asked to be a speaker at "women empowerment" summits but she barely has an idea about what women go through. You have got to forgive her because she didn't get a chance to make friends outside her rich kids' circle.

The "girlboss" brand of feminism is about the survival of the fittest. To be able to survive in a cut-throat world, one must leave others behind. When the winner stands on the podium, their victory is the only thing that matters. Nobody cares about the bad things they did had to get there, people they had to cheat, the favours they enjoyed. They won.

The First Girlboss:

If we have had centuries of men dictating terms for women, we have also had centuries of women stepping over other women in order to catch the bread crumbs thrown out by men.

It is no surprise that the patriarchal system not only benefits men but also some women in certain aspects. Many women have completely exploited their privileges and helped the male gender in oppressing other women.

Someone similar is Sophia Amoruso, the much-celebrated and almost cancelled 'girlboss', 'shepreneuer', 'she-EO' or whatever consolation prize they are giving out to women these days. Amoruso's story at first is indeed inspiring. She left her day jobs to sell thrifted (sometimes allegedly shoplifted) clothes on eBay and then went on to build her own website, Nasty Gal. She then wrote a novel about her experiences and entrepreneur journey titled #Girlboss. 

Only later, it was discovered how Amoruso made it to the top. After her company went bankrupt, Jezebel came out with an investigation report. The report highlighted how people in the Nasty Gal firm were treated. Pregnant and sick were fired, many laid off. This had brought lawsuits against Amoruso after the firm was restructured. Very soon Amoruso launched her #Girlboss foundation in 2014 which aimed at giving out money to female-run startups.

Credit where credit due, Amoruso's grants must have helped someone but the 'Cinderella of tech' can barely be called a feminist. Of course, after her exploitative stint, she became the victim herself. Like most women. The kind of criticism directed towards her will never even touch the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos(S) of the world.

Girlboss Vs Boss dilemma:

It's complicated, to be honest. The words like actress, girlboss, shero and she-EO ( weirdest) among many others somehow seem disrespectful. But we can't ignore the fact that when we say boss most of us have a picture of a well-suited man in our heads. It's involuntary. So deep-rooted that it will take time to be able to see the other and imagine different kinds of people in that position.

But how do we do that? By making it possible for each other to be the bosses. That is what feminism is essentially about. No doubt, practising feminism in a capitalist world is a very unfair ballgame but women have tried and succeeded before. Can't we be fair and successful?

For all I know, feminists don't step over people. Feminists do not try to justify their bad practices by hiding behind hashtags. They might not find their pictures on hoardings and seminars posters but they surely aim to not become the helping hand of the patriarchal system. Sisterhood is the answer.

Views expressed are the author's own.