Will the final #girlboss please turn the lights out

Death of the girlboss etc. 

Death to the girlboss etc. 

I used to study the girl bosses. I'd read everything I could about them. Their routines, how they made it, how they lived - so that I could follow their path to success.

21-years-old, no idea what I wanted to do, and working at a newsagency. Don't get any romantic ideas about this starting my journalism career. Think dusty grey-blue carpets, a long, low magazine rack down the centre of the room, flickering strip lights, and rarely an 11 am to 2 pm customer, bar the occasional stay-at-home mum inquiring after a very specific brand of calculator for her child.

Each shift, there were only two options: flick through glossy magazines you would never actually pay for, or wither away with the packs of rubber bands no one knows we sell.

It was 2015 and Frankie magazine was queen. My time spent between sparse customers flicking through Forbes 30-Under-30 magazines (and all the other glossy list-based publications which gratified women-doing-it-first) to get inspiration.

I would read CEO Magazine or TIME's Most Influential People in order to catalogue these budding female CEOs' every career move. Only then could I emulate their careers. What did they study? What was their first job? At what age did they have children? What kind of exercise did they do? It was like research for the job of being a ‘successful woman’.

Today, they are the 'fallen girlbosses'.

Turtleneck-loving founder Elizabeth Holmes, 38, was recently convicted on fraud charges after building a 'revolutionary' blood testing product that didn’t work. “The world’s youngest self-made female billionaire”, a 2016 Forbes 30-Under-30 read.

Mother-of-Millenial-pink Emily Weiss, 37, who last week announced she would step down as Glossier Inc chief executive, following years of racism allegations at retail stores and pressure to further diversify their makeup products.

Sheryl Sandberg, 52, the controversial mother-feminist, on Thursday announced her resignation as Facebook’s COO after 14 years. She also authored cult-hit Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead (2013). Its message was famously boiled down to something like "women COULD have it all if they were willing to give it their all". 

In most cases, I was building my dreams upon endlessly profiled, relentlessly quoted women who were bound to fail in their so-called “mission”.

For years, people have been paying their respects to the dying #girlboss. She was an unsustainable, highly curated, shiny-white and Millenial-pink picture of ultimate female business success. A tiny group of similar-looking CEOs who would infiltrate the system rather than change it, so it goes.

The term was coined by fast fashion Nasty Gal boss Sophia Amoruso in her 2014 memoir by that very name. Since then, racism, mistreatment, and endless public apologies have marked the alleged #girlboss honour roll.

Amoruso's rise was chronicled in a 2017 Netflix series, but her own career was plagued by accusations of discrimination and mismanagement. Her company was once sued for firing employees after they became pregnant and eventually went bankrupt. 

With each resignation of a Girlboss-era CEO, we are closing the door on a very brief and ironic Millenial moment. Now, even talking about ‘women in business' as a collective can be irking.

Weiss’ announcement last week that she would step down as head of Glossier Inc to become executive chairwoman of the board, came at a difficult time for the eight-year-old business. Earlier this year, the company sacked one-third of their staff and 2021 saw a 26% downturn in sales.

Despite her somewhat controversial legacy, her cheap, beautifully-packaged, direct-to-consumer makeup brand opened the door for crowds of personalised, consumer-focused beauty businesses.

Sandberg pre-dates Girlboss but her the-woman-not-the-system message laid the path. The image was fractured when Michelle Obama famously told a stadium crowd it wasn’t as easy as “leaning in” for many women.

As Sandberg packs her cactus into a cardboard box, some suggest she was a feminist who helped foster a Facebook that was misogynistic, racist, and full of disinformation. Critics say she left years too late.

But, if nothing else, her position at the top of one of the world's biggest companies must have inspired generations of women, right? 

In a 1500-word statement posted on Facebook announcing her resignation, she said she wanted to give more time to philanthropic work which was "more important to me than ever given how critical this moment is for women".

As Girlboss CEOs melt before us, the next generation is making cautionary TikToks about “girlbossing too close to the sun”. 

Did the SHE-E-O have to walk so that the (gender not-specified) CEO could run?

#Girlboss was the cringe feminist media moment that launched a thousand 'girl-run' businesses. It was the women-in-business debutant ball that the world could handle, but even then, only just. White women came out as CEOs in reclaimed pink "the future is female" t-shirts, not a hair out of place. They were globally palatable and shiny enough that people like me were rooting for them.

RIP. May they rest in 2015.