Here Comes the New Girlboss. Act Busy.
The Bossbitch is here. And she looks better than you.
Move over Grandpa Gordon Gekko, there’s a new bitch in the corner office. And her hair is perfect.
This week, a WSJ piece about how AI (and I’d argue, also the Trumpcession) is fueling a new tough-talking boss era caught my eye. It casually quoted three women.
The very first quote was by Emma Grede, co-founder and/or CEO of Good American, SKIMS and other Kardashian properties:
“Work-life balance is your problem”
“Leave pity city.”
- 2003 MillerKnoll CEO Andi Owen (who back then had to apologize)
Also cited: Uber Chief People Officer Nikki Krishnamurthy warning a town hall that “disrespectful” commenters would get a talking-to.
The vibe shift has been happening for a while. Even when Biden was still running for president, 80s and 90s style power suiting and offices were coming into the aesthetic, as I’ve written about.
But now 80s are fully back, honey. Greed is good. Make America Hot Again is here (see the hat later in the scroll).1 And the harsh nature of our new reality is co-creating a sleek Ladyboss in its image.2
It’s bigger than a Zara shoulder-padded blazer.
Old Girl Boss: So Cringe
When the Millennials did Girlboss in the 20-teens, it was unapologetically modern girly Girl Gang. All preaching world-changing, all-it-takes-is-a-laptop for a new Egalitarianism.
They wore fanciful and colorful fits, hand lettered like hell, showed off candy colored we are fam offices and were “Starting Movements” often with e-comm businesses selling self-helpy coffee cups, confetti journals or style advice.
It all came crashing down right as 2020 came in. Often via anonymous IG feeds dishing about how ruthless, demanding and sometimes racist and inept these bosses were. Many OG GBs went into hiding, as pandemic lockdown let people pick them to the bone. IG giveth, IG taketh.
They can say what they want about Gwyneth, arguably a Bitchboss Mother - but she’s still standing. And recently announced she’s eating carbs and cheese again.3
Since then we’ve been living in a liminal space.
Four things happened:
1 - Girlboss 1.0 devotees had kids and/or hit the glass ceiling. The pandemic made plain that no, women do not have the same amount of emotional labor hours in a day as the guys or staffed households do. Rough landing for the “girl power” generation.4
So began a new cottage industry of substackers whose regular posts + paid communities point out how everything about modern womanhood sucks. Answer: a $700 digital family touchscreen calendar for your kitchen.
2 - Trad Wifery
3 - Gen Z entered the workforce. After a couple of years of WFH sads, they decided they want what they never had, but saw on screens5: Offices, work happy hours, business wear, shadow sides. All the stuff GenX had, including Diet Coke and cigs!
While the substackers were freaking out about milkmaid dresses, Evie was building a double-D war chest and Trump started filling his made-from-TV-for-TV cabinet.
Thus emerged the grown version of the Girlboss:
4 - Bossbitch6, also called the Mean Hots7 in the MAGA incarnation.
She’s a sexy no-sugar, high-protein cocktail of (maybe) MAGA + hot rich aesthetic + SaaS, funnel & AI-informed + Office Fetish.
Girlboss Grown Up = Bossbitch
This is a Ladyboss with an edge. A new feminism, for the woman who loves America or is unflinchingly self aware about late-stage capitalism. She wants to build an Empire or get access to one, not get sidelined at 36.8 And she’s real about what it takes.
If Girlboss is IG and matcha, Bitchboss is Tiktok, Zyn, and coke (diet, powder - or both).
The interesting part: Bitchboss silently or lightly acknowledges it’s a lot easier to succeed beside the right (male) power and while looking great in the boardroom AND the bedroom.
This is not incorrect, it’s pretty real.
Its queen: The Conservateur.
The Conservateur woman (not a girl): Lady in the streets, freak in the sheets and killer with spreadsheets. Fluent in yacht etiquette, even if it’s just from watching Below Deck and Richtok.
This is her moment and the Conservateur is her media property.
She could be a stay-at-home girlfriend, but honestly, boring. So go conquer finance or tech. The vibe is big business, big shoulders. Not Etsy shop. CEO not She-E-O.
It’s officially time for an ENJOLI relaunch. Coty, CALL ME!!!
For those under 45, hit the link.
Because as I’ve said before, how many people can afford Trad Wifery? It’s largely a fantasy. Almost 40% of households have a female breadwinner.
A woman’s gotta work or have family money (ideally, both but fake it til you make it):
“You Can Have It All” But…
If pictures speak louder than bots, the “You Can Have It All”9 if you work hard enough narrative we got late 20th century is sorta back.
Especially in the Trump cabinet.
But now and back then, it’s understood you probably need to marry/get born well, never let them see you sweat, and carefully manage your male bosses to pull it off.
It’s a bit more honest with the marry well, look hot, and kiss the right male ass. They aren’t pretending it’s easy or without sacrifice:
Is it all a Deep State conspiracy?
Here’s the real anti-wrinkle: Some see Bossbitch as a clapback to TradWifery, resistance by conservative women who don’t want to get shoved into the kitchen.
Others see a canny strategy to take over the larger cultural narrative and co-opt feminism.
Some have posited that critiques of Bossbitch MAGA by the Trads and professional crybabies like Matt Walsh are part of a well-orchestrated smokescreen.
Think of it as a bad-girl sister wife that could have broader appeal to more women, including disaffected centrists.
If we think there’s an internal war, more credit to the Bitchbosses. So diabolical… so Bannon… so maybe?
Either way or both, it has more chance of succeeding than Trad.
But It’s Bigger than MAGA
Bossbitch is not all MAGA, far from it. But it is informed by the vibe shift.
Truth: The world got a lot harder in the last 4 months and attitudes are changing. Fast.
We get it - the system is broken, it’s rigged. And no one seems to be doing anything about it, so get the bag while you can.
This aligns with a lot of what I said a few months ago. A Women’s Retreat is nice, but what’s the ROI? Our outperformance has made us a target. The backlash is in full force, from politics and culture to the economy.
Workwise, headlines read that AI is set to replace 80% of female10 jobs first - if you believe the male-coded AI slop articles trying to scare us.
Women resist AI more than men, maybe because we read. And we know how the story ends.
The subtext is clear: We need to take care of ourselves by all means necessary.
Female Founders, Rebooted
The new Bossbitch has a fresh eyes-open reality that’s more survival of the fittest than anything else. And it’s booming in the market Gen Z knows best: social hustle.
GenZ is now going right into podcasting on this, with the hosts of the Female Founder beat on the Unwell Network being just 22 years old.
As Emily Sundberg puts it:
The aesthetic of work — and the performance of ambition — can be more polished than the business behind it. It also becomes the attachment point for ads and subscriptions, and before long, the “building in public” content IS the business.
The most in-demand speakers at HBS are influencer empire-builders, as I noted this week on my Linkedin:
Meghan Markle has rebranded yet again, from royal wifey to wannabe Martha. If that doesn’t work out she’s also launched the podcast: Confessions of a Female Founder. Huh??
Back to Emma Grede
The Gredes have intrigued me for a while. They’ve created the various Kardashian product empires, but fairly behind-the-scenes. Until quite recently, they were usually referred to as “The Gredes” and mostly avoided press and, as far as I know, politics.
Emma Grede is perfect for an across-the-aisle face of this era.
In the last two weeks, she’s been on the Goop pod and Diary of CEO amongst others, as she launched her own:
Her backstory and no BS real-talk persona is very Bossbitch. And very inspiring.
It’s the opposite of the Millennial the Future is Female era, which seemed cheerfully hellbent on making it look easy breezy, fun and pastel perfect. Before slaughtering the women they idolized when it was revealed it ain’t all pretty.
And Emma is pretty. Actress gorgeous, really. Married well.11 But with a straight talk that’s a more relatable version of Kim. Who probably works more for Emma than the other way around.
Emma is truly self-made, making it a story MAGAs, strivers and bootstrappers alike can love.
Grede’s backstory is rags-to-riches: High school dropout, raised by a single mom, mixed race (but usually pitched as daughter of Jamaican/Tridadian immigrants).
She’s a hustler who pitched Mama Kris (note: not Khloe) directly on Good American and so far, has been quite disclosing about her hard-won success story.12
She doesn’t sugarcoat the work:
She can come off as low-key non-DEI:
Note: non-DEI not anti. Prediction: We’ll be seeing more non-feminist successful female founders soon, too. Lean In 2.0.
She’s not the first female founder of color (or male, for that matter) that I’ve heard express similar statements. Certain folks will claim quotes like this as proof of meritocracy. I see the no/low-filter of working class childhoods.13 Maybe neither are true.
Says be a perfectly imperfect mom:
Refreshingly old school in an age of the fully monitored baby:
Very bootstrap. Very no-excuses. Very gritty. Very now.
Turns out Emma is on a truth-telling rampage about how Balance is Bullshit. But she does it while in a sharp suit with glowing skin.
Bossbitch!
P.S. Hahaha. Found this old New York Mag on an old Feed Me issue about the Office Fetish aesthetic.
Last-ditch. In 1973. You gotta love it.
Also this week
Our Country is Making Women into Human Incubators - A brain-dead woman who was dying of natural causes has been kept on life support for three months against her family’s wishes, because she was 9 weeks pregnant at the time of medical emergency. Of course, the state is NOT paying the medical bills.
This is not the first time this has happened.
Reading:
Despite this Girlboss critique, know that I feel for Millennials. I am reading Girl on Girl.
This fishing vest travel hack.
Forget travel, I may just start wearing one of these everywhere. I lose 6 pairs of sunglasses a year.
If you read this earlier, or got a link you may be thinking: Wasn’t it Bitchboss? Yeah, then I decided this sounded better so I changed it. Lessons from Being a Female Founder. Optimize!
It’s kind of funny than Ivanka has to have dinner with Theo Von. Oh to be a fly on that martini glass.
Not joking, this was covered as actual news.
Cynical? No babe, just GenX with a childhood more like Grede’s than Goop’s. We knew the score.
Ain’t that America!
Bossbitch is my term, but I think these women would see it as compliment.
Jo Piazza coined, I believe.
(Even if she’s currently 47 and already lived it.)
Including big, beautiful hair.
Sick of seeing “email jobs” being girl ghetto-ed/minimized and “feminized” work being a pejorative while they desperately try to pretend working a factory line is desirable, creative and manly - or even largely possible in Robot World. Getting off the algorithm is the resistance and first line of anti-brainwashing.
Jens Grede, her husband, is the son of a Swedish director dad and actress mother. He started his career at Wallpaper magazine and co-founded Frame amongst other big biz wins.
Me.
Gosh this hit home. I’m part of that interstitial zellennial generation that grew up at first in terrified fascination of the Miranda Priestley archetype but later being sold the manic pixie dreamgirlboss as an attainable ideal (disclosure-- I still follow and admire Sophia Amoruso). Personally feeling like I'm in my Andy Sachs era but the messaging i'm getting from the ambient culture and my female mentors is to keep trending in the direction of the Ladyboss because "that's how the game is played."
I'm personally irked that I have to do what the men do in (proverbial, i still work in tech) heels and with a smile-- not because I hate heels, i have a fabulous shoe collection that a slightly more punk-goth Carrie Bradshaw would envy-- but because goddammit I only want to do it if I want to do it.
It remains to be seen if I'll get over being ticked about it to enjoy doing what should be purely delightful, aesthetic feminine things again, despite the incentives to them no longer being purely for my own joy. I feel a reframe coming on...
Literally ordered new items for my wardrobe this week to step it up. I didn’t know it was my bitchboss era, albeit, not as corporate or demanding (I’m a self employed empty nester) but I’m here for the energy!