The Glorified #GirlBoss and Why We Don’t Need It
The hashtag #GirlBoss and its other labels such as “Boss Babe” have gained popularity since Sophia Amoruso, the founder of the brand Nasty Gal, titled her autobiography in 2014 which became a great hit. Branded with its pink colour and bold black font, this label was thought to be the face of internet posts to ‘empower women’. Centralized on her experience in building a business, her hashtag brand became the typical neoliberal take on feminism: based on whiteness, privileges, and a type of thinking that does not engage with varied identities nor willing to challenge the system in which gender has been affected. White feminine women going up for more wealth under capitalism has always been its market.
The glorification of #GirlBoss recently has faded out as more people started to debate the nature of this label; “girlbossing” now has become a humorous derogatory term in public discussion. In regards to this issue, below are the reasons on why we don’t need #GirlBoss and what should be amplified instead.
First, this label isn’t inherently empowering. White feminism is harmful because it does not acknowledge that whiteness is also the core problem of injustice and inequality. When women empowerment ideas and movement only revolve around white women, they fail to underline that patriarchy has always been strongly enabled by white men. Even if gender inequality is addressed under white feminism, it wouldn’t be able to fully address inequality thus it only enforces the idea that white women become safer with their white privileges. In the opening of her popular book Hood Feminism, Mikki Kendall’s words are precisely written, “White feminists often fail to see how race, class, sexual orientation and disability intersect with gender. How can feminists stand in solidarity as a movement when there is a distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?” (Kendall, 2020).
Second, representation is only the first step. Just because Amoruso managed to ‘break the glass ceiling’ in corporate America, does not mean that we can close the book on gender based socio-economic struggles. We believe that women representation, especially in women leaders, is one of the keys to reach a point where the awareness toward equality can be normalized. But we also understand that women’s representation is only the first step because not every woman wants to uplift other women especially when internalized misogyny and praised masculinity are utilized for them to pave the way into business and powerful positions.
Instead, what we need is to amplify the voices from intersectional feminists, primarily the voices of Global South women. Intersectional feminism emphasizes that gender issues can never be fully elaborated without understanding the relations to racism, classism, homophobia, etc. Simply put, intersectional feminists aim to comprehend gender issues through magnifying glass and for a bigger frame simultaneously so that the identity of women that demand equality is not reduced only to their gender but fully considered based on their identity that shapes their struggles and experiences. Women in the Global South have experienced different kinds of injustice that upper-class white women can never relate to. We need to move on from the narratives of #GirlBoss under white feminism that was written to benefit a few women, and move forward to proceed towards an inclusive narrative instead–of truly empowering women without diminishing their intersected identities.
In hindsight, the rise and fall of #GirlBoss opened a can of worms into understanding intersectional feminism. White women glorifying the hashtag are now forced to look at their own privileges. On the other hand, other women primarily women of colour are starting to question if the ‘victory’ of #GirlBoss has divert their attention to the feminist fight for healthcare, reproductive rights, education, etc. Feminism is about challenging inherent patriarchal values and intersectional feminism aims to demolish existing power dynamics between groups altogether (Crenshaw, 1989). The fight for feminism is complex, challenging, and crucial — that’s why it is harmful to reduce the movement to a single hashtag.
Sources:
Coaston, J. (2019). “The Intersectionality Wars”. Retrieved 12 October 2021 from https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”. University of Chicago Legal Forum. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf.
Kendall, M. (2020). Hood Feminism. Viking.