being 'that girl': how the girlboss culture of the 2010's found itself in the 2020's
if you've ever read #girlboss by sophia amoruso, you may be entitled to financial compensation
If you’ve been on TikTok or Instagram in the past two years, then you’ve probably come across ‘that girl’.
You know, the young 20-something girl with the seemingly idyllic morning routine complete with a Bella Hadid-inspired slicked back bun? She’s most likely to be seen dressed in her favorite Alo Yoga and Lululemon pieces embellished with gold jewelry and an iced coffee in tow. More often than not she’s white, thin, and has probably just posted raving about a new Matilda Djerf set she received in the mail. Oh, and she definitely follows Emma Chamberlain on Instagram.
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For those of us who were chronically online from about 2013 to 2017, this genre of woman who always seems to have her life together feels vaguely familiar. Memories of Glossier’s inception come to mind and turning the first page of Sophia Amoruso’s memoir #GirlBoss floods back into view. Sheryl Sandberg’s whisper creeps in your ear telling you to Lean In. You can recall the influx of media outlets profiling female CEOs, carefully detailing their odyssey to becoming an empowered woman who fought her way to the top - obtaining her rightful place in the C-Suite.
The girlboss era of the internet was rife with kitschy slogans and external signifiers of female empowerment - would you prefer a #GIRLBOSS mug or a membership to The Wing (which is now defunct, might I add)? This particular season of fourth-wave feminism arrived at a time when Hillary Clinton’s run for president was top of mind and Beyonce’s 2014 performance at the VMAs was all anyone could talk about for months. The girlboss era lived in a unique balance between the “having it all” mindset present in early 2000’s romcom protagonists coupled with the golden age of social media as women began to fight even harder for equal representation in the workplace.
As someone who was in high school in the midst of those quintessential girlboss years, its subscription to never-ending hustle seeped directly into how I envisioned my career. I yearned to be a young woman with agency over her work who hustled her way to being a “SheEO” - which might be the worst phrase to come out of 2015 think pieces on female founders. The desire to make your way in a corporate structure not built for you to thrive in enticed me and made sense in my fledgling feminist brain. A girlboss believes that hustle and ambition are the lifeblood to success - even if she needed a ANGRY WOMAN tote bag to prove it. The girlboss had a right to fight her way into certain rooms and into that snazzy corner office - even if she was the only one who got there.
As the story goes, girlboss culture came and went. Pushback against the movement occurred as many began to realize that being a feminist icon in the workplace doesn’t exactly translate into substantial change - especially when the motive for subscribing to that dogma is personal gain rather than societal development and mobility for women in the corporate sphere. The girlboss movement provided surface level change - sure, more women held positions of power, but once they got there no policies or changes were enacted to ensure that all women could be upwardly mobile. Many spearheads of the girlboss movement - Sophia Amoruso, Emily Weiss, Leandra Medine and more - saw their power swiftly diminish.
This intense need for productivity, success and the optimization of your life hasn’t left the psyche of young women since then but has instead repackaged itself into something new, in classic Gen-Z fashion. Instead of hyper-focusing on how to blaze our way through capitalism and glass ceilings, women and girls of today are filling their days to the brim with meditation, gratitude journaling and pilates workouts topped off with schoolwork or a corporate job. The concept of wellness plays a large part in this new reworking of female performance - you’re meant to supplement your daily activities with the items best able to advance your wellbeing in the most efficient way. Supplements, green juices, large salads, trendy workouts - all to produce the most exemplary version of yourself.
The most interesting moment of crossover between the girlboss and ‘that girl’ is present in the woman with a corporate job - who has her day scheduled perfectly, of course. Content creators will post their 5am-9am routines before their job begins and their 5pm-9pm routines after they clock out - as if every second of the day is a uniquely tailored equation of various actions that culminate into an supreme sense of fulfillment and nirvana. What’s puzzling about this trend is that there doesn’t seem to be an end goal in sight - after the matcha lattes are made and the skincare is complete, you just get up and do it all over again. Of course, eating well and taking care of your mental health is undoubtedly beneficial to your overall quality of life, but at what point does adding various supplements and tasks to your daily routine end up becoming asinine and overwhelming? Especially when they all seem to add up to a performance to be posted on the internet.
The belief that runs rampant between these two concepts is the common thread that optimizing your life is the ultimate path to success. In her essay, “Always Be Optimizing” from her book Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino explains this idea perfectly:
“The ideal woman, in other words, is always optimizing. She takes advantage of technology, both in the way she broadcasts her image and in the meticulous improvement of that image itself. Her hair looks expensive. She spends lots of money taking care of her skin, a process that has taken on the holy aspect of a spiritual ritual and the mundane regularity of setting a morning alarm. The work formerly carried out by makeup has been embedded directly into her face…Everything about this woman has been preemptively controlled to the point that she can afford the impression of spontaneity and, more important, the sensation of it - having worked to rid her life of artificial obstacles, she often feels legitimately carefree.”
The journey to become the ideal woman is the driver behind both these ideals - “that girl” and the girlboss both aim to employ all the possible functions necessary to become a woman that has it all. I’ll even admit it myself - I’m a sucker for both of these trends. The “that girl” aesthetic doesn’t fall very far from my own social media consumption and movement through the world.
But let’s be real - no matter how many green juices you drink or how many self-help books you might read - the meticulous performance and crafting of the ideal life experience may only stick as deep as surface. Women deserve to feel empowered in any right - but when does the hustle and productivity become just another way for us to move through the world, performing?
obsessed with this!!
I fully agree. The trend of having your life together is exhausting and damaging. It’s interesting how we like to watch these “it girl” videos but don’t do it ourselves. It’s almost like we know the risks.