Girlboss
Etymology
From Sophia Amoruso’s 2014 book #Girlboss. Sincere at first, the term curdled into irony by around 2020 as critics noted its individualism, cemented by the 2021 meme triad "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss."
noun · /GURL-baws/
A woman celebrated for individual corporate ambition — now used mostly to mock that ideal as hollow.
What it names
It names, and now skewers, a strain of feminism that framed personal hustle and climbing the corporate ladder as empowerment while leaving the underlying system untouched. It’s a handle for "empowerment" that turns out to be individual ambition rebranded.
Example
The startup’s "girlboss" branding didn’t survive the stories about how it treated junior staff.
Related idea
Sits in the ironic triad beside gatekeeping and gaslighting; girlboss is the ambition, gatekeeping the hoarding of access, gaslighting the manipulation.