Who's To Blame For The Failure Of The Girlboss Dream?

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Two novels, murder mystery 'The Herd' and biting satire 'Self Care,' investigate the smoldering wreckage of the hope for a utopian feminist startup.

And it’s not just bad there; it’s all the gleaming corporate feminist utopias we’ve imagined, each hiding an ugly, festering thing behind millennial-pink walls and marble accent tables. The promise of safety has been betrayed, a crime committed, a creeping bloodstain left to darken the bamboo floorboards. Someone must pay.

She’s hurting, but she’s also thrilled. “The worse it gets ― I mean the more women who are outraged and terrified and suffering ― the more our user base grows,” she tells Devin. At the minor cost of her own mental health, she’s rallying women to sign up for their wellness-focused app. Men aren’t entirely absent. Their primary financial backer, Evan, is the consummate male ally: Independently wealthy, he rose to fame by eliminating himself from “The Bachelorette” while denouncing the show’s toxic masculinity, and then invested his money in this by-and-for-women startup.

Like many such businesses, the Herd is framed as more than that by its creators. It’s “a community,” Eleanor says. “It’s a sacred space designed to make our members’ lives more balanced, beautiful, and connected.” She delivers the line semi-ironically to Katie, playing up the polish of her elevator pitch. “Hell of a line,” Katie replies. The message to possible members: paying hundreds of dollars a month to join is self-care, not to mention feminism .

What initially seems to be a relatively functional workplace quickly proves to ooze with repressed toxicity. that took aim at tech startup culture, including Doree Shafrir’s “Startup” and Alissa Nutting’s “Made for Love,” and noted that more than one of them concluded on a note of girl-power triumphalism, with a new female CEO humanizing an evil corporation or a crew of women working together to take down a bad startup bro. “The problem is, putting a woman in charge doesn’t fix anything. We know that because we’ve seen it,” I wrote, citing the already checkered track record of girlboss-led companies .

By the end of “The Herd,” with the mystery resolved and a chilling window opened into the villainous hearts of white lady entrepreneurs, the appeal of the Herd has evaporated. The women have to step away from it. After all, “there were other coworking spaces, other networking opportunities, other places where passionate women and marginalized genders could come together, and if there weren’t, maybe someday we’d make one.

 

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