The ‘Girl Boss’ Era Looked Different for Black Women
glamour.comBy Many people define a “girl boss” in a myriad of ways, but what did she look like? What image comes to mind? In the eight years since Nasty Gal founder first coined the phrase with her New York Times best-selling manifesto, the girl bosses that society most elevated fit a singular mold: They were white.
In that time period—from 2014 to 2019—women-owned businesses increased by 21% to a . Calls to support these entrepreneurs were more vocal than ever before, and a that included countless conferences, podcast, newsletters, and blogs all devoted to the concept of being a girl boss was born.
The framework promoted the concept of feminist capitalism, with merchandise and events selling women on the idea that they too could be a boss, own their own destiny, and hone into their power. (There’s an episode of that captures this well.)But as a new decade came, the era was Writes Michelle Legro for Medium, “The ambitious corporate feminism that had raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital was now falling, boss by boss.
It was the end of an era for millennials who had come of age in a post-recession workplace in crisis, where they were told that if they need to fix something, they should start with themselves.”And as the concept of girl-boss-ism became increasingly stale, another group of entrepreneurs was rising in numbers: Black women.
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