What happened to the girlboss?

The term “girlboss” began as a symbol to represent powerful women. It eventually became something much more sinister and, well, corny. The meme cycle spares no one, especially not ushers of capitalism and white feminism. While the girlboss has been casting a large, pink shadow over our lives for a very long time, her toxicity can be hard to trace. Alex Abad-Santos [dives into the depth of that darkness]( and explores how we came to love, and then hate, everything the girlboss stands for. —[Melinda Fakuade](, editorial fellow for The Goods The death of the girlboss [credit cards repeating on a light blue background]( Getty Images The girlboss is one of the cruelest tricks capitalism ever perpetrated. Born in the mid-2010s, she was simultaneously a power fantasy and a utopian promise. As a female business leader — be she a CEO, an aspiring CEO, or an independent MLM superseller — the girlboss was going to unapologetically will empires from the rubble of rejection and underestimation she faced all her life. As companies grew in her image, so did her mythos; her legacy would be grand and fair, because equality was coming to work. Everyone was supposed to win when girlbosses won. Hard work would finally pay off. What set girlbosses apart from regular bosses was pinning feminism to hustle. Women like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and former Nasty Gal CEO Sophia Amoruso — who coined the term — were finally wrangling power away from the men who had held it for so long, which was seen as a form of justice. As the concept was codified, the idea of the girlboss became about the melding of professional self and identity, capitalist aspiration, and a specific (and arguably limited) vision of empowerment. [Read the full story >>]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( How Snapchat became the forgotten social platform Why Snap’s users and investors have such different ideas about what the platform is for. [Read the full story >>]( A weed dealer in NYC on how legalization could affect his business Weed dealers might have the opportunity to go legit. Should they? [Read the full story >>]( More good stuff to read today - [The emptiness of "couple goals" TikToks]( - [America's cruel unemployment experiment]( - [The radical help of the anti-advice column]( - [Chrissy Teigen's fall from grace]( - [Your most important vaccine passport questions, answered]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Manage your [email preferences](, or [unsubscribe]( to stop receiving all emails from Vox. If you value Vox’s unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring [contribution](. View our [Privacy Policy]( and our [Terms of Service](. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved.