gaslight gatekeeper girlboss что значит

7 признаков, что вы самый настоящий газлайтер (пора с этим что-то делать)

Материал будет полезен и в случае, если газлайтят вас.

Что такое газлайтинг?

Газлайтингом называют форму психологического насилия, цель которого — изменить представление человека о реальности, заставить его сомневаться в собственной версии происходящего и своих же воспоминаниях.

Зачем он кому-то нужен?

С его помощью один человек манипулирует другим, пытается его запутать, искажает информацию, и жертва начинает сомневаться в адекватности собственного восприятия произошедшего. Это частый прием абьюзеров, позволяющий установить контроль над другим человеком.

«Это злоупотребление властью, с целью доминировать над другим человеком, — говорит Патриция Питта, доктор философии, практикующий психотерапевт и автор книги „Решение дилеммы современной семьи“. — Газлайтинг подрывает уверенность жертвы в том, кем она является, во что верит. Это может привести к тому, что человек будет делать то, чего на самом деле делать не хочет, ощущать вину за то, чего не совершал. В конце концов, жертва может столкнуться депрессией, тревожным расстройством и другими психологическими проблемами».

Откуда взялся этот термин?

Термин «газлайтинг» возник в 1944 году, после выхода на экраны фильма с Ингрид Бергман в главной роли — «Газовый свет» («Gas Light»). По сюжету триллера, муж главной героини убеждает ее, что она сходит с ума, чтобы скрыть от нее тот факт, что он ищет спрятанные в доме драгоценности.

Поиски требуют периодического включения света на чердаке, из-за чего остальные лампы в доме светят более тускло. Когда героиня говорит об этом мужу, он настаивает, что ей это кажется, параллельно убеждая, что она совершала поступки, о которых ничего не помнит. Он также изолирует ее от других людей. В результате всего этого героиня начинает думать, что теряет рассудок.

Вновь популярным этот термин стал в нулевые, и в 2018 году его добавили в Оксфордский словарь.

Кто может быть газлайтером?

Газлайтинг чаще всего используется людьми в позиции сильных по отношению к слабым.

Психоаналитик Робин Стерн, автор книги «Эффект газлайтинга», пишет, что жертвами этого явления чаще всего становятся женщины, а среди манипуляторов встречается больше мужчин. Также жертвами газлайтинга часто становятся дети, которыми манипулируют их родители.

Однако случаи бывают разными: манипуляторами могут оказаться ваши начальники, коллеги, друзья и даже политики (в последнее время журналисты часто используют этот термин, описывая многочисленные высказывания Дональда Трампа).

Известно, что газлайтерами чаще всего являются люди, склонные к нарциссизму (они чрезвычайно эгоистичны) и социопатии (они не уважают взгляды других людей и игнорируют их права).

«Они стремятся контролировать другого человека для удовлетворения собственных потребностей или желаний способом, который является манипулятивным и нечестным», — пишет сертифицированный психотерапевт и доктор философии Майк Макналти.

Как распознать газлайтинг?

Газлайтинг может принимать самые разные формы, но в основе всегда будет лежать вранье или намеренно ложные обещания. В книге уже упомянутой Стерн есть чеклист из двадцати признаков, которые могут указывать на газлайтинг.

Также она описывает несколько стадий, через которые проходит жертва газлайтинга, вне зависимости от того, семейные это отношения, рабочие или любые другие.

Мы приведем 7 самых явных признаков, а заодно в конце дадим советы, что с этим всем делать.

7 признаков газлайтинга в отношениях

Вы можете узнать себя или кого-то из своего окружения в роли жертвы или агрессора.

1. Газлайтер отрицает факты, произошедшие в прошлом

«Я не мог такого сказать, зачем ты придумываешь».

Это может относиться как к давним событиям, так и к произошедшим в последнее время. Если человек почему-то оказывается всегда и во всех ситуациях прав — это повод задуматься. Никто из нас не может быть прав абсолютно всегда и во всем.

2. Газлайтер часто врет и продолжает это делать, даже когда его поймали на лжи

Все мы время от времени врем друг другу (по самым разным причинам). Но газлайтеры лгут, чтобы заполучить то, что им нужно, пытаясь изменить реальность в голове другого человека.

Даже если найдутся неопровержимые доказательства их лжи, вроде текстовых сообщений или видео, они будут продолжать настаивать на своем. Газлайтеры могут быть внешне настолько убедительны, что вы усомнитесь в собственных мыслях и поверите в их версию событий.

3. Газлайтер постоянно ставит под сомнение здравомыслие жертвы

Версия событий жертвы всегда оказывается ложной, поскольку она по той или иной причине не может мыслить адекватно.

Порой газлайтер напирает на те факты, о которых знает: «У тебя голова болит второй день подряд, вот и придумала себе всякую чушь», иногда на расхожие мифы, например, про ПМС: «У тебя явно месячные скоро, я ничего такого не имел в виду» или «Я понимаю, у тебя климакс, но все равно не стоит так остро реагировать».

Наконец, нередко газлайтер сам придумывает факты, убеждая жертву, что у нее проблемы с психикой, и она сама придумывает поводы обидеться и пострадать: «Я о таком даже и не думал, у тебя паранойя».

Все это постепенно создает ощущение у жертвы, что с ней что-то не так. Ей становится стыдно за собственные эмоции: возмущение, страх, ненависть, боль. Постоянное сомнение в происходящем — явный признак газлайтинга.

4. Газлайтер регулярно обижает жертву, списывая все на шутки

«Это была просто шутка», «Да расслабься ты, это же шутка».

Как правило, абьюзер хорошо знает свою жертву, ее уязвимости, больные темы, интересы, убеждения. Он постоянно так или иначе критикует эти вещи, прямо или косвенно комментирует их, чтобы наносить удары по самооценке, причинять боль и дискомфорт.

«Эти замечания постепенно понижают самооценку того, кому они адресованы, а также влияют на чувство собственного достоинства. Вы начнете верить, что ваши интересы, устремления, точка зрения — неверны или не важны», — говорит Макналти.

Часто человек маскирует такие комментарии под добрые намерения, заботу или даже комплименты. Но не стоит обманываться, когда человек говорит «Ты хорошо выглядишь. для своего возраста» — он хочет вас задеть.

Опять же, газлайтер не забывает подчеркивать, что партнер неадекватно воспринимает происходящее.

«Разве нормально так реагировать на такой пустяк?», «Ты неадекватно реагируешь», «Тебя обижает любая мелочь», «Ты слишком обидчив(а), подумай об этом».

Эти типичные фразы используются, чтобы партнер чувствовал себя виноватым за то, что «неправильно» и «слишком сильно» реагирует на «безобидные» вещи.

5. Газлайтер настраивает жертву против родных и друзей

Агрессор всегда старается влиять на то, как жертва относится к ключевым людям в ее жизни. Он может говорить, что мать или отец на самом деле ее не любит, подруга или друг говорит за спиной, а сестра или брат — обманывает.

В некоторых случаях газлайтер сам может развить отношения с кем-то из них, чтобы убедить их в том, что жертва не в себе, чтобы с их помощью поддерживать процесс газлайтинга.

Убедив всех, что он — единственный, кому можно доверять, газлайтер становится главным кукловодом.

«Жертва газлайтинга часто бывает отрезана от людей, которым доверяла, у нее не оказывается доступа к альтернативным точкам зрения, которые помогают усомниться в происходящем и критически взглянуть на ситуацию», — уточняет Макналти.

6. Действия газлайтера не соответствуют его словам (и наоборот)

Хотя абьюзер утверждает, что заботится о своей жертве, на самом деле это не так. Как правило, он просто говорит то, что от него хотят услышать, но делает исключительно то, что хочется ему.

Как мы уже упоминали, газлайтеры — люди с нарциссическими расстройствами, другими словами, неисправимые эгоисты, использующие других людей в своих целях и выгодах.

У некоторых из них встречается так называемый перверзный нарциссизм — это крайняя форма нарциссизма, когда человек лишен возможности видеть причины проблем и неудач в своих действиях и переносит вину на обстоятельства и других людей. Как правило, он паразитирует на привязанности, совести и чувстве вины окружающих и становится агрессором в отношениях — физическим или эмоциональным.

Понятно, что люди не всегда следуют собственным словам, могут иногда не выполнять своих обещаний, но если это происходит регулярно — стоит все же задуматься.

7. Газлайтер обвиняет жертву в поведении, свойственном ему самому

Знаете, что такое «проекция»? Так вот, это именно она.

«Сколько людей постоянно подозревают своих партнеров в неверности, потому что сами обманывают? Человек, который делает это сам, смотрит на мир с недоверием. Он-то знает, как можно выкручиваться», — говорит Патриция Питта.

Что происходит с жертвой?

Первая стадия, через которую проходит жертва, — отрицание: она замечает, что абьюзер ведет себя странно или непоследовательно, она ощущает несправедливость, но отмахивается от происходящего из-за несерьезности конкретного инцидента.

Вторая стадия сопровождается сомнениями в себе и адекватности собственного восприятия ситуации. Тем не менее, на этом этапе жертва все еще защищается от абьюзера, потому что надеется, что сможет доказать свою точку зрения или переубедить газлайтера.

К третьей стадии человек начинает верить, что абьюзер прав, а он ошибается и сам виноват в происходящем. Он надеется, что если будет соглашаться с агрессором и соответствовать его ожиданиям, то сможет заслужить его одобрение.

Что делать, если я заподозрил в себе газлайтера?

Самый очевидный совет — пойти к психотерапевту и попытаться разобраться в причинах происходящего. Старайтесь ловить себя на описанных выше приемах манипуляции, даже если вы используете их не совсем осознанно, останавливаться и не делать так. Однако без сторонней помощи полностью справиться с ситуацией у вас не получится.

Что делать, если я — жертва газлайтинга?

Вам также стоит походить к психотерапевту или в группу поддержки для жертв домашнего насилия. Если такой возможности нет, можно обратиться за поддержкой к друзьям или близким, вызывающим доверие. Они помогут взглянуть на ситуацию со стороны и разоблачить манипуляции.

Робин Стерн в своей книге отмечает, что первый шаг к тому, чтобы справиться с газлайтингом, — быть готовым полностью разорвать отношения с агрессором. При этом она считает, что вопрос о том, рвать отношения или стараться изменить их, каждый должен решить сам: если абьюзер — ваш начальник или коллега, вы можете хотеть остаться на своей позиции, потому что у работы в этой компании есть другие преимущества.

В таком случае Ариэль Лив, автор книги «Сокращенная жизнь», которая много публично рассказывает о своем опыте борьбы с газлайтингом, советует оставаться непреклонным и придерживаться собственной версии событий, сопротивляться, когда другие сомневаются в том, что вы говорите.

«Непреклонность НЕ делает вас трудным человеком. Она делает вас крепче и выносливее», — пишет она.

При этом она упоминает, что пытаться переубедить или изменить абьюзера бесполезно: какими бы вескими ни были ваши доводы, агрессор никогда их не примет, и чем раньше вы это поймете, тем легче вам будет выйти из этой ситуации.

Источник

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss Meme

Popular:

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss

About

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss is a parody of the phrase «Live, Laugh, Love» used in a variety of shitposts, that began on Tumblr in January 2021. The phrase is used to mock the stereotypical sentiments of the typical «empowered feminist,» with each term holding a negative connotation in reference to female empowerment.

Origin

On January 12th, 2021, Tumblr [1] user missnumber1111 posted, «today’s agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss,» garnering over 43,500 notes in a month (shown below). On that day, Twitter [2] user @CUPlDL0VE posted, «my agenda is gaslight gatekeep and #girlboss,» the first instance of the phrase on Twitter.

On January 13th, Tumblr [3] user a-m-e-t-h-y-s-t-r-o-s-e reblogged the post along with a photoshopped image of «Live, Laugh, Love» wall art instead reading, «Gaslight every moment, Gatekeep every day, Girlboss beyond words» (shown below). On January 18th, the image was reposted to Twitter [4] for the first time.

Spread

Throughout January 2021, the phrase slowly spread on Twitter, reaching a peak in mid-February. For example, on January 19th, Twitter [5] user @shyfew posted a video from television show Charmed of three women chanting «the power of three will set us free» over a book along with the phrase, garnering over 200 likes and 39,000 views in a month (shown below). On January 22nd, Twitter [6] user @OCEANGIRL tweeted, «are u a live love laugh or a gaslight gatekeep girlboss» garnering over 1,000 likes and 140 retweets in under a month.

On January 24th, Twitter [7] user @burntlovenotes made a shitpost image macro featuring the phrase over images of guitarist Frank Iero of My Chemical Romance, garnering over 300 likes in three weeks (shown below, left). On February 11th, Reddit user /u/ItsHipToTipTheScales posted a Homestuck themed «Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss» Venn diagram to /r/homestuck, [8] garnering over 120 upvotes in a week (shown below, right).

On February 12th, Twitter [9] user @pianta_ tweeted, «gaslight gatekeep girlboss is the new live laugh love» garnering over 1,900 likes and 400 retweets in a week. As the trend evolved, Twitter [13] [14] users began posting images of characters under each phrase in Twitter posts, meant to personify each phrase (examples shown below).

Manipulate, Mansplain, Malewife

On February 15th, Tumblr [10] user @relelvance posted, «Manipulate, mansplain, malewife» as a male-themed opposite to «gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss,» garnering over 27,000 notes in four days. The post was screenshotted and reuploaded by Twitter [11] user @nortoncampbell on the same day, garnering over 14,200 likes and 2,800 retweets in the same span of time (shown below).

On February 16th, Twitter [12] user @bridgersfilm uploaded a post containing both phrases overtop of a screenshot of the main characters from the film Gone Girl, meant to depict the two phrases, garnering over 27,900 likes and 4,400 retweets in three days (shown below).

Источник

Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss: How a satirical twist on ‘live, laugh, love’ became the internet’s new mantra

Jokingly saying “live, laugh, love” as a tribute to the outdated, momcore wallhangings of yore is now out. Saying “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” is in.

Let’s unpack the hottest new alliterative phrase that’s permeating the internet.

Where did “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” come from?

Like so many memes before it, the phrase originated on Tumblr and became mainstream when someone tweeted about it.

According to the internet historians at Know Your Meme, the first known instance of the phrase was in a Jan. 12, 2021, post from Tumblr user missnumber1111.

“Today’s agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss,” they wrote. It has since been shared more than 44,000 times.

That same day, Twitter user @CUPlDL0VE posted essentially the same thing on Twitter to little fanfare.

On Jan. 13, Tumblr user a-m-e-t-h-y-s-t-r-o-s-e shared the earlier post from missnumber1111 and included a Photoshopped image that reads “gaslight every moment, gatekeep every day, girlboss beyond words.” The imagery reflects the style of “live, laugh, love” decor, as Twitter user @loltay69 pointed out when she later shared the photo.

the live love laugh of our generation

gaslight ⭐️ gatekeep ⭐️ girlboss

Over the next month, the phrase spread across Twitter. Users began sharing instances of gaslighting, gatekeeping and girlbossing throughout pop culture, including the below reference to Gone Girl, which also introduced the antithesis to gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss — manipulate, mansplain, malewife.

Eventually, the phrase began to stand alone. Someone even made a quiz to determine which word of the trifecta best represents you.

What is it — besides the rule of threes and the aforementioned parody of live, laugh, love — that makes the phrase so infectious? To understand the appeal of “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss,” we must break it down.

What does “gaslight” mean?

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation in which someone tries to get another person or group of people to question their own reality or perceptions. It can play a role in emotional abuse, as well, which doesn’t exactly make the term ripe for “memeification,” though it has become regularly discussed in pop culture.

The popularization of the term demystifies its meaning more than it popularizes the tactic, though. If more people understand what gaslighting is, the more quickly they can identify it and call out the person attempting to gaslight them.

#duet with @tayoriccii please don’t let the boys see this #gatekeep #gaslight #girlboss #fyp

For instance, in December, TikToker Dana Pizzarelli went viral for calling out her boyfriend who denied doing something she saw happen with her own eyes. She identified this to her audience as gaslighting, and she told In The Know that it helped her audience realize that exact thing had been happening to them, though they didn’t know what to call it.

“Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” doesn’t encourage gaslighting — it pokes fun at people who do, and thus makes it easier to identify and destigmatizes calling it out.

What does “gatekeep” mean?

Gatekeeping is, according to Urban Dictionary, “when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access or rights to a community or identity.” It’s used to make the gatekeeper feel superior to others on the outside or more deserving of an identity.

For instance, maybe you’re wearing a Nirvana shirt from Urban Outfitters. If a punk music fan tells you that you can’t wear that shirt if you can’t name five Nirvana songs, that’s gatekeeping. There’s a whole gatekeeping subreddit dedicated to calling out this behavior.

Gatekeeping, like gaslighting, is a term that describes a manipulative behavior made popular on the internet. In the same way, the term’s popularization makes the behavior easier to call out.

What does “girlboss” mean?

Someone who gaslights and gatekeeps generally isn’t a great person, which is why the inclusion of “girlboss” in the phrase is so interesting. Being a “girlboss” in the early 2010s was considered a good and impressive thing, but now, Gen Z considers it a “cringe” sign of trying too hard to further oneself.

TikTok user @glamdemon2004 identified a recent example of being a “girlboss” or “girlbossification” in the reemergence of Gabbie Hanna, a Vine star turned YouTuber who, after months of relative silence, spent several days calling out critics of her 2017 poetry book.

Hanna’s “creating conflict out of thin air” and beefing “with everyone she’s ever interacted with” gave off an air of “taking back her power,” as a so-called girlboss does in this day and age.

Other critics of the word “girlboss” say it’s needlessly gendered “patronizing” — women who are bosses are just bosses. We shouldn’t act like it’s unusual if a woman has power, and turning everything pink and flowery to appeal to women can be “sexist and demeaning.”

These days, it’s not necessarily a good thing to be a girlboss, but it’s also a joke. The 2010s girlboss movement, still embraced by some Millennials as “cheugy,” has been teased into oblivion.

The three G’s encapsulate what young internet users hate the most, and that’s why we love it

Someone who gaslights, gatekeeps and girlbosses is the perfect target of Gen Z disdain, but that disdain is so pure, it’s almost good.

Bringing these three words together celebrates the female scammers we’ve grown to have complicated love/hate relationships with, like fictional manipulator Amy Dunne from Gone Girl, Instagram try-hard Caroline Calloway, convicted fraudster Anna Delvey and disgraced tech pioneer Elizabeth Holmes. There’s something inspiring about being so villainous in such a modern way.

“Live, laugh, love” became satirical over the years, but “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” has always been a joke. In a way, the phrase gaslit, gatekept and girlbossed its way into modern vernacular.

In The Know is now available on Apple News — follow us here!

If you enjoyed this story, read more about what “cheugy” means.

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The death of the girlboss

Girlbosses convinced us they would change capitalism. We weren’t wrong in hoping they would.

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The girlboss is one of the cruelest tricks capitalism ever perpetrated. Born in the mid-2010s, she was simultaneously a power fantasy and a utopian promise. As a female business leader — be she a CEO, an aspiring CEO, or an independent MLM superseller — the girlboss was going to unapologetically will empires from the rubble of rejection and underestimation she faced all her life. As companies grew in her image, so did her mythos; her legacy would be grand and fair, because equality was coming to work. Everyone was supposed to win when girlbosses won.

Hard work would finally pay off.

What set girlbosses apart from regular bosses was pinning feminism to hustle. Women like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and former Nasty Gal CEO Sophia Amoruso — who coined the term — were finally wrangling power away from the men who had held it for so long, which was seen as a form of justice. As the concept was codified, the idea of the girlboss became about the melding of professional self and identity, capitalist aspiration, and a specific (and arguably limited) vision of empowerment.

“Literally every woman that I look up to is unrelatable,” Rachel Hollis, a very wealthy self-help guru, said in a TikTok video in April, describing how she wills herself to wake up at 4 am to conquer her day. Hollis wrote in 2016 how much she hated the term, but quotes like hers crystallize the girlboss mentality.

“If my life is relatable to most people, I’m doing it wrong,” she continued, and in the accompanying caption she compared herself to a slew of unrelatable women she looks up to, including Harriet Tubman.

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If Hollis’s fetish for relentless, unstoppable work and comparison of herself to the creator of the Underground Railroad is a prime example of a girlboss gone wild, so was the swift backlash.

Hollis’s most generous critics saw her words as a moment of unchecked privilege. Her sterner critics called her out in disgust, pointing to Hollis’s casual dehumanization of her housekeeper, whom she described as the woman who “cleans her toilets,” and her Tubman comparison as examples of typical, wrongheaded girlboss attitudes. People who worked for Hollis corroborated her off-putting conduct. She was, in their view, just another white woman co-opting empowerment and feminism for profit, with no intention of lifting anyone else up.

Hollis is the latest in a recent spate of corporate women leaders — including Away CEO Steph Korey and certain founders of luxury spin classes — who create companies plagued with stories of bullying, cruelty, and overworked and underappreciated staff. It now seems as though toxic work environments were a feature of their design and not coincidental bugs. Perhaps working for a girlboss was just like working any other job.

As more and more of these stories surfaced, “girlboss” shifted culturally from a noun to a verb, one that described the sinister process of capitalist success and hollow female empowerment. On TikTok and Twitter, girlboss the verb became yoked to “gaslight” and “gatekeep” to create a kind of “live, laugh, love” of toxic, usually white feminism.

“Gaslight every moment, Gatekeep every day, Girlboss beyond words,” one image macro reads.

But it’s not that people wanted the girlboss to fail; it’s the opposite. The concept of the girlboss failed us all.

The girlboss brought to life a way to talk about real concerns and barriers in the system honestly and frankly. It also posited a solution so blazingly simple — put women in charge — that it could never work.

We wanted it to be this easy to buck the whole system. When it turned out women CEOs were just CEOs, we never let them forget it.

The girlboss succeeded because of benevolent sexism

Look at this woman, completely unfazed by the fluttering money around her! EyeEm via Getty Images

Girlboss’s slow march toward irony was supercharged when the neologism officially got a name seven years ago.

“In 2014, Sophia Amoruso’s memoir, called #Girlboss, comes out. This is where the word comes from,” feminist author and poet Leigh Stein explained to me. Stein is arguably the world’s foremost authority on the girlboss movement, having studied and written an entire novel about it. “That same year, Beyoncé performed at the VMAs in front of a sign that says ‘feminist’ illuminated in bright letters. As we all know, anything Beyoncé does is a huge cultural moment.”

Stein pointed out that at the time, the idea of bringing feminism, or some kind of feminism à la carte, into the corporate world was inescapable. Beyoncé and figures like Amoruso punctuated it, but it had begun brewing a year earlier, when Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg published her lauded and controversial memoir Lean In in 2013. The book sold more than 4 million copies worldwide, and established a language to talk about women’s issues in a corporate environment. Amoruso swooped in with the shorthand soon after.

“When you look at the actual word ‘girlboss,’ there may be some internalized sexism,” Alexandra Solomon, a professor who specializes in gender and gender roles at Northwestern University, told me. “Research shows that as women get older, and as women become more powerful, they are perceived as less likable. So by using that term girlboss, there’s a desire to be powerful but a fear of losing likability.”

In some aspects, Solomon explained, the girlboss 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 a way to maneuver around traditional beliefs and systems that had historically diminished women’s voices.

Riding on feminism’s increased cultural cachet (as boosted by high-performance Beyoncé octane), Sandberg, Amoruso, and the girlbosses who came after them seemed to propose (along with the press that breathlessly profiled them) that women advocating for themselves and their worth was, intrinsically, a form of justice.

In this context, power and money became measures of equality, and rising to power in a capitalist system turned into an empowering feminist victory. It was a way of framing financial success and consumerism as goodness. The implicit promise was that if consumers made these girlbosses successful, it would mean better working conditions for women, and with that, maybe empowerment for all.

“If these women could succeed while upholding feminist values and treating their employees humanely, then maybe the patriarchy was just a choice that savvy consumers could shop their way around,” Amanda Mull wrote in the Atlantic in 2020, explaining how the girlboss concept had entwined itself with justice. “Maybe people could vote for equality by buying a particular set of luggage or joining a particular co-working space.”

That cultural moment seemed to manifest itself in women-led startups such as Glossier, a direct-to-consumer cosmetics company launched in 2014; Away, a luggage retailer created in 2015; and the Wing, a coworking space for women founded in 2016.

The media narrative surrounding these very different companies’ origins was pretty similar: A woman, or a group of women, has an idea for a company that fulfills a need for young women especially; funding is difficult to find (because venture capitalists underestimate women) but is eventually secured; a unique company is created, one that is an extension of the founders’ backstories and forged by their struggles; the women succeed because they’ve leaned into their strengths as female founders, and in doing so overcome a specific stripe of sexism.

Girlboss language wasn’t just used in the C-suite stratosphere. It trickled down to lower-level workers and eventually multilevel marketing schemes. Tethering feminism to hard work and entrepreneurship with justice fit seamlessly into MLMs, which have their own predatory horror stories and are built on exploiting tight-knit, predominantly female communities with promises of financial success.

But mythologizing the girlboss didn’t last very long.

In 2015, Amoruso’s Nasty Gal became the subject of a discrimination lawsuit alleging it had illegally fired pregnant employees. After it was filed, employees came forward with stories about how Amoruso’s company was a toxic workplace. In 2016, Nasty Gal filed for bankruptcy.

In 2018, as criticism of Facebook’s handling of Russian election meddling, misinformation, and personal data abuse mounted, Sandberg’s bullying behavior and attempts to discredit the company’s critics came to light in a New York Times report.

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 oasis the Wing said the coworking 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. The Wing founder Audrey Gelman stepped down that June.

The same year, employees at Glossier alleged they faced discrimination from both their company and the customers they served. They said upper management was predominantly white women.

Similar allegations of toxic work environments and discriminatory behavior surfaced at women-led media outlets such as Refinery29, Man Repeller, Who What Wear, and Vogue, as well as women’s clothing company Reformation and the women-founded luxury exercise chain SoulCycle.

Like their origin stories, these companies’ reckonings had a similar trajectory: The businesses touted themselves as inclusive communities built by women, but behind closed doors, some employees said, was a toxic and sometimes abusive mix of, well, gaslighting and gatekeeping. Those revelations hurt these brands with their consumers.

“A huge part of the problem is if you make feminism part of your brand, then your customers are going to say, ‘Wait a second. Are you a feminist company behind the scenes? Or is [it] just optics, like optical allyship?’” Stein told me.

Girlboss-branded companies failing to live up to their own standards prompted thoughtful pieces about the way we think and frame women’s ambitions, and why these problems seemed to be ingrained into the companies’ design.

In June 2020, Stein herself wrote a viral think piece asserting the death of the girlboss. Her most convincing point was that girlboss failures weren’t some new folly or unique to women; this was, quite simply, capitalism.

“The rise and fall of the girlboss says more about how comfortable we’ve become mixing capitalism with social justice, as we look to corporations to implement social changes because we’ve lost faith in our public institutions to do so,” Stein wrote.

The success these companies achieved in linking gender to their brand belies the idea that women are more virtuous, kind, and gentle; they weren’t supposed to succumb to greed or power, to commit the same terrible abuses male CEOs perpetuate.

“There’s a lens or mentality that a female boss will be more nurturing,” Northwestern’s Solomon told me. “It’s a setup. Her clear boundaries are then perceived as cruel boundaries or punitive. Or it goes the other way, and people perceive her gentleness as weakness.”

Girlboss downfalls, under this line of thinking, aren’t seen as just a failure of business but also as a betrayal of their gender.

The allegations of discrimination and toxic work culture at girlboss-led companies are undoubtedly serious, Stein said. But at the same time, “there’s kind of a trap” when it comes to how we talk about those business failures. She argues it’s possible to have conversations about what went wrong without losing sight of accountability or laying these failures at the feet of women writ large.

“There’s a whole exposé in the Times about the Amazon work culture and how it sounds like a nightmare to work at Amazon. But no one’s in the comment section, like, saying Jeff Bezos is bad at feminism,” Stein said. “Women are held to account for how ethical and virtuous they are as leaders in a way that men are not.”

Why girlbossing was always going to be an empty promise

A notebook for girlbosses to, if they felt like it, document their girlbossing. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Girlboss

In speaking to experts about the rise and fall of the girlboss, the one theme that keeps surfacing is that while the term ultimately flopped, the enthusiasm surrounding it was real. The barriers facing women in corporate structures, the desire to make workplaces better by making them more inclusive, the anger from being overlooked in current systems — it’s all authentic.

Lindsey Bier, a professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business who specializes in gender communication, explained that one of the reasons she thinks the term became so popular and its downfall so magnified is the lack of empowerment women face in the workplace. For more than a decade, she explained, study after study was published about how women in leadership roles were penalized for how they talked to their employees.

“Men in leadership positions are expected to be assertive and direct. Women, however, face a paradoxical situation in which they’re judged if they’re not assertive enough, but then they’re also judged if they are too assertive and direct,” Bier told me. “The data shows that both men and women judge women in leadership in this way.”

The girlboss wave of feminist-adjacent corporate empowerment offered an unapologetic promise that women would not be judged or undermined the way they would in traditional corporate settings. The hard work they put into their jobs would finally be rewarded. But the promise became emptier when basic scrutiny revealed that employees at these companies, particularly women of color, still ended up feeling overlooked, overshadowed, or even bullied.

“You’ve changed the bodies of the people who are sitting at the table, but you haven’t changed the table,” Solomon said, explaining that girlboss offered to dismantle the system but opted for cosmetic changes.

The energy and desire for something better still exists. Both Bier and Solomon told me that younger people and members of Gen Z are more aware than previous generations when it comes to companies’ and brands’ values, and they factor in those values — e.g., equality, diversity, inclusion — when deciding where to spend their money. This is a shift from previous generations, which looked for their government to enact change.

While that sentiment can be reassuring, Stein is a little more cynical when it comes to getting corporations and capitalism to bend to a consumer’s will. Pinning hopes on CEOs to dismantle structural barriers is how we got into this mess in the first place. “I actually don’t want to see more of us, like, yelling at Rachel Hollis to end racism in America. I don’t think we’re targeting our rage into the right place,” Stein told me.

Expecting Hollis or Sandberg or Amoruso to fix systemic inequality in the United States is moot when they’re not often given a chance to fix their own companies, Stein says. “I don’t think we’re actually giving them the opportunity to do better,” she told me. “These girlbosses that are 29, 30, 31, 32 when they start the first company, they’re publicly shamed in the press for their failures. Do they get to try again? Are we really saying as a culture, ‘No, they don’t get to try again’? That’s what’s unfair to me.” Fixing their own businesses isn’t as ambitious as solving America’s deep problems, but it’s at least a small step in changing the system.

If you laugh at the girlboss, she can’t hurt you

Getty Images has a lot of stock photography of women in offices laughing maniacally. Getty Images

In January 2021, a sentence appeared on Tumblr: “today’s agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss.” Very much like how the girlboss became a cultural archetype who outgrew her original ambitions, gatekeep and gaslight are terms that, in recent years, exploded in popular usage. “Gaslight” has become the trendy synonym for lying — particularly a strain of lying where someone denies an obvious truth — and “gatekeep” has become interchangeable with discrimination.

The three Gs were linked, and the internet ran with it: TikToks, image macros, and tweets were all dedicated to these pillars of a cringe-inducing cultural moment. That “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” neatly traces the business practices of some of the most notorious women CEOs of the past decade may be more serendipitous than pointed. Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss functions as more of an ironic “yeesh” at how embarrassingly enthusiastic we all were to jump on the buzzword bandwagon.

Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss was a vibe.

Yet that hasn’t stopped the term from becoming sarcastic shorthand in interpreting pop culture, which hasn’t yet fallen out of love with girlbosses. In I Care a Lot, Rosamund Pike plays Martha Grayson, a sharp-bobbed antiheroine who scams old people out of their money via legal loopholes. Martha isn’t a bad person, she’s just going through her gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss arc.

The marketing for Disney’s new Cruella de Vil origin story, wherein Cruella is an aspiring fashion designer at odds with an even-crueler Baroness, calls to mind ads for Glossier. The phrase has even been tossed at Bethenny Frankel, who in interviews says she hates the word girlboss. Yet, in her new Apprentice-like reality competition show, The Big Shot With Bethenny, she’s portrayed as a mean and awful boss who’s also supposed to be the protagonist.

Recently, the CIA, an organization that’s known to partake in torture, created an entire ad about how it’s an inclusive place for women to thrive. It’s not torture, the internet replied, it’s just girlboss, gaslighting, and gatekeeping with some water.

«I am unapologetically me. I want you to be unapologetically you, whoever you are. Whether you work at #CIA, or anywhere else in the world.

Command your space. Mija, you are worth it.»

Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss becoming a meme that’s now used to point out the hollowness of capitalism or organizations like the CIA co-opting social justice talk feels like the last gasps of the girlboss. As the pandemic brought job losses and shined a light on wealth inequality, many of us may be more cynical and weary about our corporate overlords — no matter what form they take — than we were in 2013.

Solomon, who specializes in gender psychology at Northwestern, pointed me to Audre Lorde’s 1984 essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” Lorde wrote about how systems like white supremacy and patriarchy perpetuate themselves and how difficult it is to break them apart:

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.

In the context of girlbosses, putting these women in powerful positions was never going to buck the capitalist and patriarchal system because there was never an intent to change it — just wield it. Solomon explains that a lot of girlbosses learned to navigate and were supported by a capitalist system. The more they were exposed, the better the rest of us got at recognizing that it “sure as hell is just easier to use the master’s tools,” Solomon said.

Maybe mocking the girlboss to the point of redefinition takes back a little of that power. Redefined through comedy, she turns into a joke. The girlboss can’t hurt you if you can laugh at her.

Laughing makes it easier to admit that we got played, that we were once able to foolishly hope that a group of women were going to fix an entire system. It’s pretty funny, even if we wanted them to.

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