You know her, and you love her. Even if you don’t, you actually do.
Deep down, everyone has their inner girlboss. We all can tap into our inner girlboss and universally slay — we are all girlbosses. Everything, everywhere, all at once, is girlbossing.
However, she’s a controversial queen.
The girlboss archetype has become a corporation’s wet dream. Slap a woman in a pantsuit holding a rainbow flag riding on top of a missile, and you’ve got corporate posturing. Don’t worry, we have at least one woman worker — out of dozens of males. But hey, that’s diversity.
She’s supposed to “clean up” the image of corporate behemoths that are actively polluting the atmosphere and inciting chaos. Your engineering classmate who’s contracted to work for Lockheed Martin? Yeah—- he’s that kind of girlboss. Live, Laugh, Lockheed Martin.
Unsurprisingly, the #girlsgetitdone optics could only last so long. What a shocker that it all completely fell apart.
The girlboss, throughout the 2010s, became a symbol of the churning capitalist wheel, and the optics never solved anything for women in the workforce. Lay women still faced issues like sexual harassment and unpaid leave if they became pregnant and started a family — making it less of a choice for all, but a privilege for a few who can afford to have children.
Despite the positive narrative the world has thrown onto women, in accepting the conditions of modern corporatism, we’re instead set back decades. The corporate-coded girlboss, and dare I say the office siren, have been co-opted to feed into the capitalist wheel which benefits first and foremost wealthy men.
We’ve played ourselves bad, and pushback from reactionary anti-woke campaigns dug a deeper hole for women.
We all recognize that the hollow cries of “female empowerment” are a comical failure, but is there any way we can resurrect her? Yes — we can become our own icons and girlboss together.
You need to reclaim and reappropriate the girlboss to fit your own narrative and unleash her so you can build yourself up and stand out.
Don’t be a cool girl and quit your own life, letting others dictate who you are. Be unique, be cringe and be a girlboss. Don’t recklessly abandon your own self-worth in pursuit of catering to the nonchalant male consciousness. Instead, actively reject the need for approval from others and replace it with self-assurance.
Don’t settle for temporary peace. Make your opinions and beliefs known.
Someone can’t get on board with your values? Time to get good at being convincing. Someone is using offensive language, spewing slurs in every direction? Call them out — as you should. Your friend has a Trump supporter as a boyfriend? Get to cracking and ease her into the truth that she cannot magically “fix him.”
Convince her that she should channel all that positive energy into herself. She is her own passion project and so are you.
Another way to embody the girlboss is by becoming highly educated. Take a class in international affairs, or better yet, take a class in cultural studies or a foreign language. When you become a worldly person, you’ll be able to better understand more nuanced issues — a real empath.
Becoming globally aware, becoming more empathetic and tuning into the world is a rite of passage for this new and improved girlboss.
We are on the precipice of realizing what is good and socially just for women everywhere if we step into the shoes of this mystic idol we call the girlboss.
Make no mistake — we are in the process of becoming a girlboss, always. Being a girlboss can mean anything you want it to. In order to reclaim the girlboss in our favor, we must pull together our efforts and skillfully craft ourselves in her image.
This Frankenstein-esque girlboss, an amalgamation of our hopes, ambitions and desire to do good, can become the new vessel for empowerment. Whether it’s building up your own self confidence or learning about the world around you, it matters.
It especially matters when your very likeness, artistic expression and image are jeopardized.
For instance, female Nike athletes who are on the front of magazines and promotional ads aren’t treated kindly by the same corporation, simultaneously praising and abusing their empowering image. While their complaints about male behavior and their health concerns are minimized, Nike values profit over people.
Don’t get it twisted — diversity and female empowerment are a net good, but only if those who represent diversity and female empowerment are its main benefactors.
We recognize corporate posturing, so let’s go a step further. They shouldn’t be selling us back an idyllic image of ourselves in the first place, only to backstab its female workers. We’ll simply create our own girlboss.
By raising our own consciousness, or more eloquently, by raising our ya ya yas, we shall overcome the issues of misrepresentation and being talked over. Corporations don’t have our best interests at heart — but we do. We uplift ourselves and uplift others.
This “girlbossed too close to the sun” ethos needs to be buried and replaced with radical girlboss maxing: self and community development. Is it really about avoiding being a “try hard,” or are we just being bullied into conforming to corporate norms?
So I say, in the name of the mother, the daughter and the holy girlboss, we shall take our rightful place not at the corporate roundtable — but as vibrant icons. You’re iconic, so be a girlboss.
Sidney Uy is a dual philosophy & sociology sophomore and opinion writer for The Battalion.
