I'm glad to see the "Girl Boss" moniker phased out
But I don't like "Snail Girl" any better
According to Fortune, the Girl Boss era is over. It’s all about Snail Girls now.
The term Girl Boss was coined by Sophia Amoruso, the founder of Nasty Gal, an on-line clothing retailer. The brand launched in 2006 as an Ebay store and took off like a rocket when most large apparel brands were still debating whether or not people would ever buy clothes on-line (No one will! They want to try them on!)
Nasty Gal grew to $100 million in sales in about 6 years. Five years later it went bankrupt. But Amoruso had built a name for herself as a sassy girl boss and became a personality, despite the business and brand failure. (It still exists — it was purchased in a bargain basement sale by a British on-line retailer that still operates it today. The business hovers just above that $100 million mark. Not nothing, but not the star it was promised to be.)
The fact that the business failed, or mostly did, didn’t matter. Amoruso was able to capitalize on the initial success to grow her own fame. She wrote two books — #Girlboss and Nasty Galaxy. The first — #Girlboss — delved into the founding of Nasty Gal and her business philosophy, if she can be said to have one. (My take: her business philosophy involves pat phrases like Take Control! Achieve Your Dreams! Know Your Worth! It’s branding and taglines, not business acumen.) The book was adapted by Netflix into a show that launched in 2017. I’m embarrassed to say I watched it.
The whole I’m a Girl Boss thing was really nothing more than branding of the performative You Go Girl! feminism variety. But in the corporate world. It always annoyed the shit out of me. Amoruso was audacious and outspoken, she was sexy and brazen, and didn’t play by the rules, damnit!
She also had no idea how to run a business and likely had no business being a boss, girl or otherwise. Sure, she had an idea that had relevance in the moment. But having an idea and getting that idea off the ground is not the same skill-set as managing and growing a business on an ongoing basis in a continuous and sustainable fashion.
Why did the business tank? Basically Amoruso spent way too much money on fancy offices (50,000 square feet in downtown Los Angeles) and marketing (buying customers who failed to come back as loyal shoppers), which led to cash flow and liquidity issues. The product quality was said to be crappy — perhaps this was why first time customers didn’t become repeat shoppers. Other fast fashion retailers (Zara, H&M) had better stuff and the whole I’m nasty thing only had so much appeal. Most grown women don’t want to shop at a store with Nasty in the name.
No matter. Amoruso was a star. Today, Amoruso is the founder and general partner at the Trust Fund, an early stage venture fund. She was an early funder in a bunch of companies, because she’d made a lot of money on Nasty Gal and her books, so I guess this now qualifies her to be a venture capitalist. I have no idea whether or not she’s qualified. Or if Trust Fund is a successful endeavor. She’s certainly a branding pro, her own personal brand being the most resonant and lasting.
The whole Girl Boss thing always annoyed me and it just felt like blatant self-promotion in the era of self-branding (which is still going). And which I’ve written about here.
Here’s the thing about brands: they don’t exist in the material sense. They are creations in the ether. They are ideas that surround an actual thing. Usually a product. In this case, a person. And her personal brand is still sassy badass chick who knows what she wants and how to get it! Whether she is that or not doesn’t even matter at this point. That’s the idea that has been created and it has stuck. She is a brand.
By the time I became aware of Amoruso I was a girl boss (lowercase) in my own right, albeit without the sheen of I’m a badass! And without any media fanfare.
At this particular moment in time (mid 2000s-mid 2010s), the media LOVED a girl boss-badass leader-you go girl CEO fluff feminist. And business journalists suspended any disbelief or basic questioning meant to get at whether or not the business fundamentals of the companies they were leading were sound. This was the era that gave us Elizabeth Holmes, after all.
I hated the commodification of feminism. And I hated the branding of female CEOs as #girlbosses. Because I, and other women I know, were busy doing actual work. Which is often not very sexy and not very badass. But can — when done well — create a sense of pride and meaning. The work requires discipline and focus. It means understanding consumer data (if you work in a consumer goods business); being disciplined about spend and return on investment; it means leading a team and sometimes having to let people go. It can be unpleasant. It is often boring. But ideally, on balance, it is rewarding. It is not about striving for a promotion. It is about pride and satisfaction in a job well-done. And building something that lasts.
It does not involve posing for magazine covers. Unless your goal is to create the illusion of success. And brand yourself as successful. Despite the trajectory of the business.
Do you sometimes do press interviews? Sure. But they are in service of the business not yourself. Do you sometimes hobnob and go to fancy parties and talk to celebrities? Yes. But it’s the side gig, not the main event. I could have skipped every fancy party and still run the business well. The parties were incidental. And mostly I dreaded them because talking to people I don’t know is my nightmare. Deep down — or not so deep down — I’m an introvert.
Mostly you spend your days as a business leader in the office reading and analyzing reports for insights, providing guidance to your team, debating issues and making hard decisions with imperfect data, and owning up for things that go wrong. Then course correcting.
At any rate, it is apparently the end of this Girl Boss era, which is fine with me. But what Fortune says is being ushered in is the era of the Snail Girl, rather than the sensible, hard working and capable female leader.
Snail Girls slow down and want to prioritize work life balance. Snail Girls don’t want to work so hard, according to Sienna Ludbey, an Australian fashion designer:
“A snail girl takes her time and creates to create. She’s running her own race, and maybe that race isn’t going anywhere but home and back to bed.”
Ok that’s fine. I’m all for balance. But balance happens over the course of your life. Any one moment may be imbalanced based on the conditions of life. When you have a baby, the early months are NOT balanced. They are consumed with caring for that newborn. Nursing, rocking, swaddling and trying to sleep enough to not go insane.
And when you’re young — maybe in your 20s — your life may be tilted towards friends and going out and maybe falling in love.
I’ve sought balance over time. I managed to be a boring version of the Girl Boss, have 4 children, have an unsuccessful marriage (not because of working too much) and then a successful one. I’ve also managed during that time to do things I love: I wrote two books, I made a documentary film and I read a lot of books and logged a lot of miles on my Fit Bit. Balance!
There were times when work took over. Disproportionately. Too much travel, too much time away from my children. But it always swung back and I was always there for the important things. Family dinners, parent-teacher conferences, playground and museum visits, school talent shows, graduations, art shows, big games, even hanging out and just-do-nothing time and on and on.
Snail Girl — some advice. Go for it. Get that balance. But if your priority is going home to go back to bed in the middle of the day you’re probably depressed. Meaningful work brings joy. Connection with colleagues and being part of a team striving towards a goal brings joy and community. Work that you love brings meaning.
Without work — for me — life is a series of brunches, bad TV shows and too much Instagram. Yes, probably more time with my children. But I have a lot of time with them and I’d be a less happy and fulfilled person without work, so it’s a choice.
You can work and have a family. And I’m not saying you have to work. You can not work and have a family and be a stay-at-home mom. But even then, being a Snail Girl that crawls into bed in the middle of the day is probably a sign you’re depressed.
And then there is the matter of paying for life — the basic necessities. Food, healthcare, housing. You don’t have to be an overly ambitious striver to pay for those things, but you can’t be a deadbeat either. Long naps in the middle of the day are probably not in the cards. So it’s a balance.
In the end, I suppose I’m sensitive to being criticized for choosing a path that required hard work. And holding up Amoruso as the symbol of the over-worked female corporate executive is likely flawed. Arguably she was never a real Girl Boss, she just manufactured the character for books and TV shows. We real girl bosses worked smarter not necessarily longer, we enjoyed far less acclaim in the public eye and we also had lives. We take pride in having laid a foundation for women coming up in the world. And hopefully we made it just a little easier for younger women — Millennials and Gen Zs — to climb the ladder. Or not, if they so choose.
I, for one, would say it was hard work but it was worth it.
And I’m not done yet . . .
(More to come soon on my next endeavor!)
1. I have always thought it was belittling to refer to grown women as girl-anything.
2. Snail-girl is doubly belittling as corporate entities don't value anyone's work life balance.
As an older woman who served an apprenticeship and moved up in a male dominated field, I feel that so many of these 'girl' terms are divisive and just a little derogatory. I never really wanted to stand out as a 'woman in my field', I just wanted to do the work as well as anyone and be successful within my own sphere. Nowadays there is this push to either 'have it all' or give in to the tides of life/whim (which may lead to going to bed in a depressive phase around noonish). Neither of these concepts or terms sum up the majority of women in the workplace- but we know how the workplace likes to label us and we will be held to and compared to and assumed to be those labels despite whatever real work we accomplish.
All we can do is keep our heads up and act professionally.