Girl boss, green juice, and selling feminism
A quick note to help the next scammer
What will feminism look like in the future? Who knows, but surprise! Not all women, femmes, and woman-aligned people are feminists, some of us are womanists, and some folks are simply waiting patiently to be included as a member of our current order of feminism… But it’s women’s history month! Brands are hungry they’re posting photos of their small staff of women who are being paid nothing, (oh was that a secret?) They’re getting paid in exposure, that’s cool, we love that, and when April 1st hits they better not ask for a raise.
I get it, feminism sells and all I care about is Elizabeth Holmes and my favorite German heiress Anna Delvey.
[Cue Fiona Apple Criminal ]
If you're not new here, you will know I am back in school for the 50th time as I am a perpetual college dropout. This time I had a good excuse and was on medical leave. With school, comes class discussions. And one of my classes is discussing contributions made by women, some of us are discussing their favorite engineers, architects, designers, musicians, and activists but then…A heated debate came in about girl bosses and how although some are problematic they were the first to do huge things in terms of business. I had a lot to say:
If you’ve seen The Drop Out on Hulu and Inventing Anna on Netflix you’ve maybe been wondering how these women can get away with this, how do they get this far? And is green juice the root of all evil?
There’s a major part of girl boss culture that we keep missing. Girl bosses will continue to fall, and us being the messy people we are, will continue to be obsessed, watching the suspense of the scam unfold. But we aren’t peeling all the layers as to why this keeps happening.
And it’s easy to say hey there are people out here scammin’, yes this is true! I’ve met a few grifters in my day even became best friends with one! But there is a take we don’t often highlight.
There are a lot of CEOs and founders that are obviously men, men who are pretending to be who they’re not. By lying to their consumers about what their product or app is, and creating toxic work environments. Yet they stay in their powerful positions for pretty much their whole lives. And that’s not because they’re doing the boss thing any better, no not at all, it’s just that men aren’t held to the same unrealistic standards as women, and even when a whistle is blown about their company they weasel their way out of it, or they simply never step down. They usually walk away unscathed.
I wanna be a number one fan of girl bosses, I really do I want to cheer on the eclectic woman founder who makes fashion feminism ( don’t laugh) But good lord, the agony, my heart is crushed because you’re doing this wrong!
Why are they failing to keep the mission they made us believe in, alive?
The identities of the girl bosses are mostly white women, who don’t face many hardships before their powerful position. Their complaints are barriers and lack of access to the boy’s table. But they usually make it this far by their white privilege and their economic status. It makes me ask the question do you want to break barriers? Or are you working towards trying to be what men are? By trying to obtain what they have, and NEWS FLASH what they have comes with exclusion and oppressing others.
White women fighting against the patriarchy by using feminist quotes on Instagram with a millennial pink background and the perfect font, cmon you know the font. Helps us believe in their vision of a cool club that includes all of us.
The patriarchy makes itself attractive by falsely convincing white women that they too can share this power with their oppressors, it creates a compelling case that if you’re white, regardless of your gender we have room for one more, your pitch is worth a seat, and then the girl boss is birthed, she begins to build the empire running an all women’s staff or a diverse staff, yet she is running this new diverse machine by using the stuff she learned from the patriarchy table. That machine is going to crash. You can’t apply that in a diverse environment or an all-woman staff and claim you’re breaking barriers.
You can’t break glass ceilings with patriarchy tools. As the shards of glass will shatter on you and the people you meant to uplift.
So under the guise of feminism( which is exclusive already) and hiring a diverse staff, girl bosses are using patriarchal tools to fulfill a mission centered around “inclusivity” which has failure written all over it. As we know patriarchy and inclusivity cannot vibe together at the party. What am I saying ?!! White men will never share power with you! They can pretend, but it’s not real.
And tokenism for white women is very different than tokenism for Black women and women of color. I’ve been a token ( whew, good times) and it comes with no reward I just learned how to gate-keep and be paranoid that someone is trying to take my spot even though there is plenty of room for more. Also, tokenism doesn’t always work for me because my otherness is loud which makes me easier to dispose of. When white women are tokens, they are promised success, and it will come if they identify with these patriarchal tools, ideas, and customs.
I will say that I believe there is an immense amount of pressure on women who are reaching success, if we mess up we’ll hear from anonymous Twitter accounts “ See this is why women can’t run a company!” If we ask for help, it then proves we are the “inferior” ones.
Hey not so fast, keep reading, adding moral obligations and principles in your brand sets you up where your audience and employees are going to expect better from you. And they should! Your legacy doesn’t get to hold any positive takes when you’re just creating a business and environment that harms everyone that supports you.
The poster girls for success are white women who are carrying patriarchy tools in the pockets of their 3,000 dollar dress. All while telling us how you are fighting for all women. Girl bosses want to change how things are done and that was the original story sold to us, we can then support and consume their businesses, but instead, our problematic faves adopted ideas and ways to perpetuate the oppressive regime that keeps all of us out.
Seeking power instead of leadership will always hit the fan. Using methods from the bros at the capitalist table will not give you different results within your company just because you’re a girl boss.
Listen we’re all scammers in our way. We’re all pretending to stand by a mission because it makes us look good, we all use the internet to pitch this version of ourselves aligned with this inclusive message and we stand by this knowing we absolutely won’t commit to it entirely, or we’ll make impossible discouraging routes for others who want to benefit from our mission. By now we all know being inclusive, and championing for the underdogs gives us a good look, and once we’re believed it’s showtime.
The girl boss era isn't dead because that would erase the girl bosses who are Black and brown. Their stories of success aren’t heavily tied to toxic work environments, this is not to say they aren’t capable of creating toxic workspaces and being hungry for fame and success that they hurt everyone to get there, no. But there seems to be a pattern here with our white girl bosses and why they keep hitting the ground pretty hard. The toxic girl boss era will always crumble, as long as white women copy the format of capitalist bros, and use patriarchal tools to gain success in the name of doing something “different” it will crash, burn, and get picked up by a streaming platform, don’t worry, we’ll see a new version of Elizabeth Holmes by Christmas.
I gradually had some of my classmates lean towards my side after our debate. Go ahead be a girl boss scam your heart out, drink your green juice, and dance to Lil Wayne’s hit song How To Love, but a quick tip, you can’t change the world using the same old oppressive tricks.
-Christy
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