IN JANUARY, a viral tweet from @ricshatty arguably put the final nail in the coffin of a longstanding feminist trend. It reads: “enough girlbosses i need girlfailures. just an absolute loser of a female character. more women who suck!!!!!” The tweet inspired several similar posts, including a popular roundup of “girl failures” on Instagram—among them Allison Williams’s Marnie from Girls and Serena van der Woodsen from Gossip Girl—and even a “girl failure” explainer on the website The Mary Sue.
The figure of the girlboss, a highly educated career woman most likely wearing a pantsuit, was both ubiquitous and short-lived. She was arguably birthed in 2013 with the publication of then Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s memoir Lean In, though grew to even greater prominence alongside Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Around the beginning of the pandemic, however, publications like The Cut and The Atlantic began to proclaim that the “girlboss” was dead, as the combination of Covid-19, worsening economic conditions, and increasing climate existentialism caused a shift in popular thinking about “dream jobs” and labor more generally.
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