The Girlboss won't save Black women

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]I think is that work from home culture is a career killer for women.

[00:00:04]>> Best advice for women in business. Get your [ __ ] ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.

[00:00:11]>> The modern girl boss is what feminism looks like after being fully absorbed by capitalism. It's one of the cruelest tricks capitalism has ever constructed.

[00:00:19]I could literally end the video right here, but I won't. A few years ago, everyone agreed that the girl boss was dead. So, why does it suddenly seem to be everywhere again? And to be clear, I don't think it's coming back, but I know after Emily Weiss' book tour, people were talking about it online.

[00:00:35]I was one of those people. I did do a TikTok about it, but I don't think it's truly back yet. However, there is a shift, and this time it does feel a bit different. It's less Tumblr version, less feminism, and more corporate power.

[00:00:49]And so, I actually started to think how we've just fallen into capitalism's trap of finding a way to sell it to us. And what that actually looks like for black women. And for anyone who's like, >> "Why are you talking about black women?

[00:00:59]It's not that deep. Blah, blah, blah."

[00:01:01]>> I am a black woman.

[00:01:02]And I think it's my right to talk about how trends and politics will affect me and other black women around me and in the world. I actually recently have spoken about the tradwife trend on my YouTube, so do click that video as well, because I think it would give some good context into what I'm talking about. My last video was actually quite different, however. It was talking about the Michael Jackson biopic and biopics in general. So, if you're interested in film and movies, do click on my recent video as well. I'll link that in the bio description below. I have spoken about this topic on my Substack as well.

[00:01:33]Please do follow my Substack and have a read at Screen the Journalist, because I do write a lot about politics, race, and gender more frequently. So, without further ado, I'm Screen the Journalist, and let's get into the video.

[00:01:46]What was the original girl boss era? The girl boss term was originally coined by Sophia Amoruso, founder of the fashion brand Nasty Gal. And it was set to honor women who were successfully claiming their power within the capitalist structures that we reside in. Starting from her bedroom in 2006, she transformed a small eBay store into a booming brand that by 2012 generated more than a hundred million dollars in annual sales and over 200 employees.

[00:02:11]With the Netflix series that came out around the time that sort of sold a dream that there was enough determination, aesthetic, branding, and relentless grinding, any woman could smash the glass ceiling and build an empire. It celebrates the self-made woman, the entrepreneurs. The girlboss era of the internet was hit with catchy slogans of female empowerment. It was on merchandises and came around a particular season of the fourth wave feminism. And this was a time when in 2010, Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, gave a TED Talk about women in the boardroom. And she alluded to the idea that there were too small in number because they were faulted on the way they are. And she said that we should lean in and take our rightful place in the boardroom. The girlboss era was also in a time when Hillary Clinton ran for president, and this was on the top of everyone's mind.

[00:02:55]Beyoncé did her 2014 performance at the VMAs, and her song Flawless was a feminist song that made a moment on almost any stage she walked out on. Till this anything Beyoncé does is a cultural moment. I read a Substack article by Anne Helen Petersen. The girlboss era lived in a unique balance between the having-it-all mindset present in the early 2000s, rom-com protagonist couples, with the golden age of social media as women began to fight even harder for equal representation in the workplace. In the mid-2010s, it was a cultural moment. Hustle harder, negotiate better, wake up earlier, sit at the table, build your brand, and be your own boss. And I don't think people understand why it wouldn't have been pushed so hard had Hillary Clinton not run for president. And just to be clear, she was not the first woman to run for president of the United States, but she was the first woman to be nominated for the presidency by a major political party. In this moment, it was basically saying, "It's time for women to take jobs that men have had that we also desire and that we have the brains for.

[00:03:54]And so, there was a clear shift and desire to make your way in a corporate structure that was not built for you to thrive in. A girl boss believed that hustle and ambition are the only way to success and had [snorts] the right to fight her way into certain rooms. And it had us in a chokehold for years. Sophia Amoruso, Whitney Wolfe, Sheryl Sandberg were a few of the women who were the face of this ideal. The ideal of the boss girl became about the melding of professional self and identity capitalist inspiration and a specific vision of empowerment. It promised that women would and apparently be able to be in the lead. And as we all know, that didn't last for long. The idea of bringing feminism into the corporate world was something we couldn't escape.

[00:04:31]But it's not that people wanted the girl boss to fail. It's actually the opposite. The concept of the girl boss failed us. The girl boss brought to life a way to talk about real concerns and barriers in the system honestly and frankly. But it also positioned a solution so simple. Put women in charge.

[00:04:46]We're in a patriarchal society, that could never work. Alexandra Solomon, a professor who specializes in gender and gender roles at Northwestern University, said, "When you look at the actual word girl boss, there may be some internalized sexism. Research shows that as women get older and as women become more powerful, they are perceived as less likable. So, by using that term girl boss, there's a desire to be powerful, but a fear of losing likability." And so, in some aspects, the girl boss label allowed women to assert power or lean in without threatening or alienating people around them. Calling oneself a girl could be seen as a compromise, but it was also way to maneuver around traditional beliefs and systems that historically diminished women's voices. And so, if you were able to reap from money and power and get in the room, then great.

[00:05:31]But in this way, power and money became measures of equality. And rising to power in a capitalist system turned into an empowerment feminist victory. The implicit promise was that if consumers made these girl bosses successful, it would mean better working conditions for women. And with that, maybe empowerment for all, which was a lie, especially for women who weren't looking to be the next CEO and weren't aspiring to be anything more than an employee, let's just say.

[00:05:54]And this is because in a capitalist society, someone has to be on the top, which means someone has to be on the bottom. When everyone is climbing the ladder to be on the top, they will inherently end up exploiting and dehumanizing those at the bottom because capitalism only works when someone reaps and profits off someone's disadvantage.

[00:06:11]The way capitalism works, the job of the employer is to get the most effort, the most use of brains and muscles from the worker as he possibly can.

[00:06:20]And at the same time, pay that worker the minimum necessary to get that worker to come to work each day. The archetype was always presented as a form of liberation for women, but in practice, it often redefined freedom as proximity to wealth, corporate power, and elite status. For many non-white women especially, this image carried emotional weight because visibility in spaces historically dominated by white men does matter. Seeing black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latina, and other non-white women occupy positions of influences can feel validating in societies that routinely marginalize them. But representation inside unequal systems is not the same thing as changing those systems themselves. Why did it die?

[00:07:01]There was pushback against the movement as people started to wake up and realized that being a feminist icon in the workplace doesn't translate into substantial and impactful change. This is true especially when the motive behind it is subscribing to the idea of personal gain rather than societal development and mobility for women in the corporate sphere. The girlboss movement provided surface-level change.

[00:07:23]Yes, more women held positions of power, but once they got there, no policies really changed. Its slow decline came with their own horror stories that was built on exploiting tight-knit, predominantly female communities with promises of financial success. In 2015, Amoretti's Nasty Gal became the subject of a discrimination lawsuit alleging it had illegally fired pregnant employees.

[00:07:44]After it was filed, employees came forward with stories about how the company was a toxic workplace.

[00:07:49]And in 2016, it filed for bankruptcy. I remember there was also so much controversy around Beyoncé's clothing line, Ivy Park. I think it was back in 2016, British tabloid newspaper The Sun on Sunday exposed the company for how they treated their Sri Lankan garment workers as sweatshop slaves, earning 44p 64 cents an hour making empowered Beyoncé clubwear. And this was crazy considering Beyoncé has always been about women empowerment. So, how was it acceptable that from her, even if she wasn't in charge, her company would allow this to happen when they could definitely afford to pay the garment workers more money. In 2019, The Verge reported on Away employees' allegations that co-founder and co-CEO Steph Korey bullied employees and that the company wasn't as inclusive or diverse as it had claimed. In 2020, former employees of feminist co-working space said the co-working and social space created was only for show and that working there was an exercise in being undermined. They also alleged that black and brown employees were mistreated. And so, what we're currently seeing is a trend and that in the world of CEO, a lot of women who are at the top seemingly have this girlboss nature, but the employees are the ones who are potentially at the bottom of their work food chain and are not being treated with the respect these women are saying they deserve in the boardroom. And before anyone says men are doing the same thing, I understand and I agree that it is a double standard when it comes to men. We know Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and all the CEOs aren't getting the same outrage, but these men aren't trying and saying that they are feminists.

[00:09:24]They ain't saying that. And so, a huge part of the problem is that if you make feminism part of your brand, then your colleagues and people around you say, "Wait a minute. Aren't you a feminist company? What's happening behind the scenes?"

[00:09:37]Is this just optics or is it true allyship? Elizabeth Galina wrote that the girlboss was supposed to be a brilliant strategist, a forward-thinking leader whose companies exploded with success thanks to their fearless innovation, constant hustle to change the world, and eagerness to bring their workers along for the ride. Only that narrative was just a fantasy.

[00:09:55]Eventually, the stories began to trickle out. These bosses could be abusive, uncaring, fickle, and ethically dubious.

[00:10:02]They cared more about their company's success than anything else, including their employees' well-being, like most CEOs. The success that a lot of these companies achieved in linking gender to their brand believes the idea that women are more virtuous, kind, and gentle.

[00:10:17]They weren't supposed to succumb to the greed or power, to commit the same terrible abuses male CEOs perpetrate.

[00:10:23]And just to be clear, I think that all these male CEOs should get dragged as much as women CEOs do. The challenges female leaders face were not merely individual missteps, but reflect deeper systemic problems. The corporate world was, is, and forever will be built on structures that were never designed to include women, and particularly women of minorities. Racial diversity was an afterthought in these girlboss-led companies, revealing the need for deeper reflection on what true inclusivity means in business. And let's be honest, even if you take away issues like inequality and systemic issues, workplaces a lot of time are toxic environments. And I think the pandemic also had a lot to do with the death of the grind and the death of what to be a boss, and the death of what to be a CEO.

[00:11:09]The pandemic fundamentally changed how people viewed work, success, and capitalism in itself. During lockdowns and economic instability, millions of people experienced burnout, unemployment, grief, housing insecurity, and worsened mental health, while corporations and billionaires accumulated so much wealth, guys. The difference was crazy. And this created a growing sense of disillusionment with the idea that hard work alone guarantees stability or upward mobility. The optimistic hustle culture politics of the 2010s began to feel hollow in a world where essential workers were being underpaid, laid off, became normalized, and survival itself felt precarious. For many women, especially non-white women and working-class women, the pandemic exposed how deeply unequal labor systems already were.

[00:11:54]Care work, emotional labor, domestic responsibilities, and low-paid frontline jobs disproportionately fell onto women, revealing the limits of corporate feminism's promises of empowerment through ambition and professional success. In the UK, black staff make up 7.4% of the NHS workforce, higher than our 4.4 representation in the working-age population. And black women in the United States still earn 63.7 cents for every dollar that a white man earns. We've been in rooms where Emma Greed, for instance, has claimed we're not showing up to. We've been visible, hyper-visible, actually. The idea that women could simply lean in to oppressive systems no longer felt convincing when those systems appeared fundamentally unstable and exploitative. And yeah, you had a group of people that were able to work from home, were able to relax during such hard time. But then you had a lot of people who are non-white on the front lines, and a lot of nurses, and a lot of doctors on the front lines having to care for people. And I will never forget, I think it was the Actors on Actors interview in 2020 or 2021, and you had people like Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston saying all these things about how COVID was great for them, and they really became in alignment with themselves, and they really found themselves, and really found what truly matters.

[00:13:05]And then you have Janelle Monae saying that it wasn't great because she could see how that her black brothers and sisters out there are still working on the front line.

[00:13:13]>> For me and my people, for the black community, this is not an exciting time for us. And this isn't a time that we get to really reflect. We're dealing with a lot of trauma, not only COVID-19, which affects us in in a disproportionate amount like you know, if America sneezes, the black community gets pneumonia.

[00:13:34]>> And you can see the differences in experiences.

[00:13:37]For some, for a lot of people who had the wealth, the pandemic was amazing.

[00:13:41]For those people who didn't have it, it was a horror. And many of us really experienced that burnout. Like the fact that our parents went to the office five days a week, I've never done that in my life.

[00:13:52]That's crazy. Five days a week. Oh my gosh, I need a hybrid working. It's like a must. Like people will burn out. And it's interesting because I even feel like this artwork, Blue Monday by Annie Lee, sums up really well. I feel like every black person has seen this photo.

[00:14:10]Lee's work depicted everyday life of African-Americans. And much of her work is a reflection of her own personal experiences. And this picture below is a visual analysis of Blue Monday. Most of us see Blue Monday as a portrait of collective exhaustion.

[00:14:22]The woman in the painting sits on the edge of her bed, head lowered, arms stretched forward, that's basically holding up the weight of her body. Her face is hidden, which allows the figure to stand in for anyone. In the era when black art was often expected to conform to certain political or cultural expectations, Lee chose instead to focus on the intimate everyday moments of black life. But this is the experience of many of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents represent this.

[00:14:45]Having just to wake up everyday, and the goal was just to make it to the end of the day, make sure that you attended parents' evening, for instance. The goal was to make sure that you didn't crash out halfway through the shift. The goal was to make sure that you just had enough money to buy food. And especially for families who moved from the Caribbean or Africa into the Western world, it's been a hard transition. Like my grandparents moved from Jamaica, and even having my grandmas have to change their mindset, having grown up in a place that didn't want them and wouldn't accept them no matter their success.

[00:15:14]It's draining. These are women who don't need to be a CEO. These are women who are fine with the little things. These are women who just want to have a comfortable life, are not looking to be millionaires. But, the girl culture doesn't care about that. The girl boss doesn't care about that. And so, the rise of girl boss ultimate fool was that its message focused on confidence, networking, career advancement, and leaning in to existing systems were largely ignoring how race, class, immigration status, and economic inequality shaped women's opportunities differently. Many non-white women were already overworked, underpaid, or excluded from the industry celebrating girl boss success. Emma Greed and the rebrand. Now, I want to be clear, it's no longer girl boss, it's girl capitalism. Okay, it's girl capitalism.

[00:15:59]Now, let's get into this rebrand, this so-called upcoming girl boss aesthetics.

[00:16:05]And I'm going to start it with Emma Greed.

[00:16:07]>> And listen, I have listened to Emma Greed's The Aspire Podcast. She's interviewed some great women, and I actually think that she's all right. She has good interview skills.

[00:16:13]>> But, disclaimer, I am not putting heat on Emma Greed particularly.

[00:16:18]I'm just going to start off with her because I feel like this whole conversation came about with her book, Start With Yourself. So, please, guys, look it. Because too many times people be in my comments asking me questions, saying, "Oh, why do you think this? Why do you say that?" And I'm just like, "You didn't watch it in the video. If you you didn't watch the video." Cuz if you watch the video, you wouldn't have made these certain comments.

[00:16:37]So, look it, guys. So, Emma Greed is now the new supposedly face of girl boss.

[00:16:43]And with the run of her tour, one of the things that caught people's attention was when she went on Keke Palmer's podcast, and she said this.

[00:16:49]>> I think is that work-from-home culture is a career killer for women.

[00:16:55]>> Now, for context, Emma Greed is a black British businesswoman and entrepreneur, best known for co-founding the fashion brand Good American alongside Khloé Kardashian, as well as helping launch Skims with Kim Kardashian and her husband. And she has spoken publicly about being a black British woman navigating industries historically dominated by wealthy white elites. All right, I will give her that. She has spoken about it. She also presents herself as disciplined, direct, and pragmatic, contrasting with the more overtly glamorous culture of American celebrity entrepreneurship. This is very This is very important to note, cuz her rise is frequently framed as a story of self-made success, ambition, and strategic networking. And she is married to Jens Grede, a Swedish entrepreneur who has also been deeply involved in fashion and brand ventures. So, initially the girlboss era rewarded visibility, but now the girl capitalist era rewards ownership. They own infrastructure. Rihanna built Fenty into a billion-dollar empire, and Emma co-founded Skims into a business. It's more than having a seat at the table.

[00:17:53]The girlboss wanted proximity to power, but the girl capitalist they want ownership of it. And what made Emma Grede blow as well is that she represents a more sophisticated form of capitalist feminism. And this goes well with the conservative aesthetics that we have all suddenly fallen into. The quiet luxury, disciplined success, soft-spoken, and elite power. And I actually discussed this in my previous video, Thin Is In, that came out last year. I'll link it below in the in the description box. And how aesthetics of being dainty feminine has really come back into fashion, and especially with Gen Z culture. Emma describes herself as a max 3-hour mom on the weekend, which tells you everything about the household staff, nannies, personal assistants, and infrastructure she has access to that makes sure that your office feel like a choice rather than an impossible calculation. I do think because of the rise of who's in power right now, Trump and the rise of conservatism in many countries, we're all slowly being indoctrinated to attain and even prefer a more conservative look. We've seen the rise of this in party trends. We've seen this in people wanting to be slimmer compared to literally 5 years ago when anyone who could afford it would get a BBL for instance. And so, that comes into aesthetic that Emma and so many businesswomen are showing, and how many of us consumers are consuming it. The attraction of millennials and Gen Z to the old money aesthetic emerges from a complex interplay of economic uncertainty, environmental consciousness, and digital fatigue. In many ways, it represents a calculated rejection of the previous decade's fashion ethos. In a context of economic recession, and the climate of consumer purchasing, the rise of the old money aesthetic signaled a shift towards sustainable and classic fashion choices.

[00:19:27]In which consumer emulate the restrained high-quality style associated with stable wealth. And so, as we consider the resurgence of old money aesthetics among younger generations, what's interesting is that it's embracing a style historically associated with privilege. And so, Emma as a black British woman, yes she is black, mixed race, whatever you want to say. I did a video about Zendaya and blackness and stuff. So, you can look at that video as well, because I'm not going to get into that here. She embodies a form of elite success that appears aspirational, respectable, and non-threatening to corporate systems. Her image reassures audiences that capitalism can be inclusive, modern, and progressive.

[00:20:04]Without requiring structural change. And in this way, her aesthetic functions almost ideologically. It softens the image of wealth and corporate power by attaching it to representation, diversity, and femininity. This is why her greed feels different from the older boss babe stereotype. She doesn't sell loud empowerment. She sells competence, stability, and proximity to elite spaces. But, we cannot fix a bias by feeding it. Before remote work even existed, black women were paying for the price of it. The pre-pandemic women in the workplace report from Lean In and McKinsey constantly showed that black women were were promoted at roughly 58% the rate of white men, while attending the same offices at the same rates.

[00:20:43]Presence was not the variable, the bias was. I read this all on the Substack by Abby Adamson, and she really hits the nail on the head. She says Emma Grede is biracial, light-skinned, racially ambiguous enough that she can code-switch between blackness when it's profitable, and proximity to whiteness when it opens doors.

[00:20:59]She married Jens Grede, a Swedish white man and creative executive, whose connections in fashion and entertainment helped catapult her into rooms most black women will never see. She built her $400 million fortune through partnerships with the Kardashians, the most famous white family in America, who's built their entire empire on appropriating black culture, black aesthetics, black bodies, and black business ideas, while maintaining white privilege and generational wealth. And I think this is so important because diversity can easily become a proof of progress that barriers have been broken down and systems have changed. Well, for many of us, that is not really the case.

[00:21:36]When you have capitalists, especially black capitalists, who have reaped from capitalism and also in a way are using their wealth, power, and businesses to exploit people, I really don't know how much progress there actually is.

[00:21:50]Representation becomes symbolic reassurance that anyone can succeed if they work hard enough. And this is politically useful because it shifts attention away from structural issues like low wages, exploitation, housing issues for instance, to resources. And instead of questioning the system itself, audiences are encouraged to celebrate exceptional individuals who's managed to succeed within it. And in this way, diversity becomes absorbed into capitalism as part of branding. For figures like Emma Grede, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Oprah, and so on, representation carries emotional significance because many people generally want to see non-white women in positions of influence.

[00:22:33]But capitalism can turn that desire into a narrative where visibility replaces liberation, making inclusion within elite systems appear synonymous with justice or collective progress. And I need to note that yes, her brand recently is about starting with yourself, but her environment allows her to start with herself. Most workplaces are already toxic for black women. So, her telling us that we need to be in spaces where a lot of the times our anxieties come from these toxic places can be hard. A lot of workplaces don't value the presence of black women, don't value the presence of women in general.

[00:23:11]And so, it's not as simple as saying you need to be in the workplace to get success. We know that visibility matters. We understand this, but visibility all the time doesn't guarantee promotion, doesn't guarantee status. Sometimes visibility can give you more work that but you're not even getting paid to do. And so, I think her success is more based on aligning herself with people who already had success. And so, I think her book should be less about visibility and more about like aligning yourself with people who are already successful. Her book should be about social climbing because that's what she's done. And it's not a bad thing. And many people, many celebrities have social climbed. Rihanna was a singer for what? 20, 15 years before she became Fenty Beauty. Kim Kardashian was only even invited to the Met Gala when she was married to Kanye West. Miss Kris Jenner, the momma jar, who's done amazing things for herself and her daughters. In both her marriages, she married people who were successful. We need to be honest about the structure of societies, where they've come from and have been able to use their advantage to get in the rooms that without certain people would have been hard for them to get into. But even so, once you're in those rooms, are you actively trying to change those rooms so it's easier for the next generation of women to come in?

[00:24:26]Or are you just trying to exist and survive in an already oppressed system?

[00:24:30]Cuz to be honest, we don't need any more billionaires, you know? What's the point of having two dozen billionaires if the employees at their companies are earning like what? £2.50 an hour or something like that? I actually saw an Instagram post that said, people don't become What did it say?

[00:24:49]I'mma put it here, but it says something like people don't become rich through hard work. They become They become rich by exploiting the labor of poor people.

[00:24:59]Something like that, but I agree. And rather than focusing on structural issues affecting most women, especially black women, capitalism encourages identification with exceptional individuals who achieve elite status.

[00:25:11]Work in the world wrote that what Emma said is not a clear strategy. This is compliance dressed up as ambition.

[00:25:17]Telling women the answer to proximity bias is to shop 5 days a week, which puts the entire burden on the person being biased and zero burden on the system doing the biasing.

[00:25:26]It is the oldest career advice in the book for women and especially for women of color.

[00:25:31]Adjust and assimilate. Be seen on their terms. Pay the tax and call it ambition.

[00:25:36]Entrepreneurship becomes framed as the solution to oppression even though most black women remain excluded from wealth accumulation. And in this way, the culture promotes aspiration over solidarity, suggesting that liberation comes through individual success within capitalism rather than through collective political or economic transformation. And so, modern culture starts to frame business success as moral authority because we look to them for more than inspiration. And now, inspiration is good. Inspiration is good, but a lot of times we go further than that. We buy the self-help books.

[00:26:08]And to be honest, I don't ever read self-help books because I just feel like it's another way capitalism gets to us.

[00:26:14]And it's just me giving a millionaire more money, like There's a lot of free information online, guys. And it's not coincidence why this trend is coming back into play.

[00:26:24]>> Why the girl boss is returning now. I think we all can agree that we all feel there was a shift in the last, well, since COVID. Nothing seems stable.

[00:26:33]Interestingly enough, our individual lives may seem stable, but the world in itself and the future less so. And it's because the rulers of our nations are consistently making decisions that don't benefit the people, that don't benefit us, but instead benefit them and their egos. Now, stay with me for a moment. For instance, the UK and Europe are economically huge and powerful, but there is so much internal division over here. Like for real, we have reform UK, migration issues, racism, classism, elitism, demographic anxieties, government issues, and young people are the most unemployed than they've been in the last few decades. In 2025, black women's employment rate fell by 1.4% points to 55.7% and this is one of the sharpest one-year declines in the last 25 years. And in the UK, according to recent reporting from Office for National Statistics, black women remain overrepresented in insecure work and underrepresented in senior roles, meaning when cuts come, there is less protection. But it's not just about numbers, it's about positioning. When you're not in the decision-making rooms, you're often first out when decisions are made. And so with all these insecurities, the modern girl boss offers stability, aesthetics, competence, and luxury without overt excess, and ambition framed as empowerment. People not thinking about how these issues are affecting a different collective group of people, but affecting them individually. Well, girl capitalism is here cuz neoliberal individualism never actually disappeared. For someone who doesn't know what neoliberal is, it's supporting a large amount of freedom for markets with little government control or spending and low taxes. Neoliberal individualism is a political logic that treats society like a collection of individuals competing for success rather than groups shaped by shared structures like class, race, or gender. And in that worldview, problems like inequality are not mainly seen as systemic. They are reframed as personal challenges to overcome through discipline, entrepreneurship, branding, and self-improvement. This came into effect when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in the '80s and Ronald Reagan also taken sway any responsibility the government had when it actually came to governing and putting it on individuals to fix the issues themselves. So, even when the girl boss era was supposedly critiqued or mocked off the late 2010s, the underlining logic never left culture. It just became more sophisticated. And instead of loud hustle harder messaging, it shifted into softer forms. One is luxury, minimalism, feminine leadership, and CEO as a lifestyle branding. The aesthetic changed, but the beliefs stayed the same. Success is something individuals manufacture, not something distributed or structurally determined. That's why the return of the girl boss feels politically significant. It isn't a comeback from nowhere. It's a rebranding of something that was always still operating underneath. Even critiques of hustle culture often stayed within the same framework. Improve yourself, pivot careers, build your own platform, start with your own thing. And in that sense, neoliberal individualism didn't end after the backlash. It absorbed the backlash and adapted to it. But it can't and will never save us. And this is because even though we've changed the bodies of those people sitting at the table, the table is still the same table. Girl boss advocates would like you to think that they're dismantling the system, but they're just opting for cosmetic and fake changes. Girl boss offered to dismantle the system, but opted for cosmetic changes. Because it's almost entirely impossible to get corporations and capitalism to bend to our will. We shouldn't bother pinning hopes on CEOs to dismantle structural barriers, because that is how we continue to pursue the same toxic cycles. Audre Lorde said in her 1984 essay, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." That systems like white supremacy and patriarchy perpetuate themselves and how difficult it is to break them apart. She said, "For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And so we can't possibly think that using the same tools and frameworks that men and white men especially use will create a revolution for us. Putting those women in powerful positions is great, and I do love that for us.

[00:30:57]But, those women who have the power are never going to break the capitalist and patriarchal system because that was never their original intent despite them selling it to you. And I want to end this section on this. The people who move fastest in this economy are not the ones sitting closest to the boss.

[00:31:15]They're the ones with the documented wins, active sponsors, and a story they can tell in any room in any format at any time. This is not a remote problem.

[00:31:25]That is not an office problem. That is a strategy problem. Proximity will not protect you.

[00:31:31]Strategy will. And so guys, to come to end my video, I'm not saying that you should aspire to reach your highest potential. I am not saying that. I just think that when we engage in a lot of self-help and the grind hustle culture, I think we just need to understand why we're engaging in it and understand the people that want us to buy their books.

[00:31:51]Are we actually understanding where they came from and what they're actually doing on their platform? What they're actually doing in their corporations in their offices? Are they happy to just be at the top and let everyone else crumble? Are they actively trying to help their employees be in good work environments, for instance? And even so, like self-help books, they say the same thing. And as a black woman, respectfully, I feel like I don't need to be told to work harder. I don't need to be told to grind harder. We of all people, and anyone who is non-white, understand the pressure of always having to do more to get the same as our white counterparts. And if not, just listen to what Eli Pope said in Scandal.

[00:32:28]>> You have to be what?

[00:32:33]You have to be what?

[00:32:38]>> Twice.

[00:32:39]>> What?

[00:32:42]>> Twice as good.

[00:32:44]>> Twice as good as them to get half what they have.

[00:32:48]>> Aggressive, but no lies. No lies were told. And so the return of the girl boss era is not just a cultural trend. It reflects a deeper political logic that has never fully gone away. Neoliberal individualism continues to shape how success, feminism, and even liberation are imagined. And within this framework, representation plays a complicated role, especially for black women.

[00:33:12]Seeing black women in elite spaces carries real emotional and cultural weight because visibility has historically been denied or limited. But that visibility is also absorbed into capitalism's storytelling. It becomes evidence of progress, even when structural inequalities remain intact.

[00:33:28]The tension's not between good or bad representation, but between visibility and liberation, between being seen within systems and changing the systems themselves. And so we are at the end of my video. I hope you enjoyed it. I tried to make it quick, but I just really thought we needed to discuss this whole girl boss trend and what it actually means for black women.

[00:33:48]So, if you enjoyed it, please do like, comment, and subscribe. I am Seren the Journalist. As I said at the start of the video, I did write about this on my Substack, which I'll put somewhere here at Seren the Journalist. So, please do subscribe to my Substack. The link will be in the description box below, and yeah, thank you if you got this far, and I will see you guys soon for another video.