IN 2020, A RECKONING began to take place in the world of women-led start-ups. What started as a series of stories alleging toxic workplaces and racist behavior turned into a wave of high-profile exoduses. Steph Korey, co-founder and co-CEO of luggage company Away, stepped down, as did Christene Barberich, the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Refinery29, and Leandra Medine Cohen, the founder of the fashion blog Man Repeller. Audrey Gelman, CEO and co-founder of the Wing, and Yael Aflalo, CEO and founder of the clothing brand Reformation, also resigned.
The subjects of these investigations represented a particular archetype: wealthy, college-educated white women. They weren’t just executives but often the faces of their brands, commanding large social followings. The companies they helmed were also uncannily similar. They peddled different products—from suitcases to jeans to co-working spaces—but they all promised business practices rooted in inclusion and posited their leadership as evidence of a shattering glass ceiling. These women were, in other words, girl bosses. Coined by entrepreneur and Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso in 2014, the term “girl boss” became synonymous with “hustle culture,” with a feminism-lite twist: the optimistic, almost religious desire to get ahead at work and in life. #Girlboss is the millennial-pink version of Helen Gurley Brown’s Having It All, the living embodiment of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s order to lean in. The project was, on its face, necessary: The game is rigged against women who are, by all measures, as capable as men. But in mere months, the #Girlboss went from being an empowering idea to shorthand for a type of fake-woke feminism. (Tellingly, Nasty Gal also faced allegations of workplace discrimination.)
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