Caroline Calloway is many things but not a girlboss
Being white and upper middle class does not mean you do or aspire to own the means of production, and it needs to be said; you can have had every material advantage and still be a flop!!!!!
The term ‘Girlboss’ has been a part of the zeitgeist since Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso made it the title of her 2014 memoir, one of those books you could buy near the tills at Urban Outfitters. As its reach grew in our capitalist society, it was meant to be a positive thing, like how can you not like financial independence for women? Women couldn’t take credit cards out without a man’s approval, either their father or husband, until the mid-70s. Connotations of the word soon soured when it was revealed that she was allegedly awful and her vintage empire collapsed like the Roman one but with jean jackets.
Similar stories have followed. Women are touted as the next big feminist thing, bringing gender equality through their expensive and irrelevant wares, serving only rich women with high cultural and financial capital. Notable examples include Audrey Gelman, who established The Wing, a now-defunct WeWork but for ladies, who unsurprisingly did not liberate all womankind from the shackles of capitalist patriarchy. The powder pink Soho House knock-off closed after allegations of racism from staff aimed at upper management, including Gelman, circulated. A similar fate befell Leandra Cohen of Man Repeller, the now-defunct online fashion and lifestyle publication, fame.
However, these warnings to women seeking to use their femininity as a smokescreen to economic exploitation do not prove the fruitless endeavour of being a ‘girlboss’. A girlboss does not need to fall on their face. Some soar and continue to do so, like Gwyneth Paltrow, the most preeminent Academy Award-winning sex toy manufacturer. Some have their legacy continue beyond the grave, like the patron saint of the girlboss, Margaret Thatcher and the late Queen Elizabeth II, who broadcaster Emma Barnett, on her first cursed edition of Woman’s Hour, labelled the definition of ‘girl power’ (?????????)
Again, not all those that “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss’ are famous. You can be a pedestrian girlboss. You can be a girlboss and not be profiled in the New Yorker. All you need to qualify is to echo the teachings of neoliberalism and spread its false gospel. But really, it’s just a shorthand to show that economic power is the only crucial sociological factor and that womanhood is often deployed as a weapon in the bourgeois’ arsenal. What do you mean I am bad, for am I, a little lady, doing things like exploiting your labour for my own personal enrichment? When your terrible boss is a man or a woman, you don’t care! Capitalism will not free women, and we should say it!!!!
Anyway, who isn’t a girlboss, and has been falsely accused of being one, is Caroline Calloway. Due to a string of interviews and the revelation she lied to get into the University of Cambridge, Caroline Calloway has been back in the cultural zeitgeist, and she was libelled with the term on a recent instalment of the podcast ‘Cultural Hang’ with Holly and Hannah, who discussed her recent Vanity Fair tell-all.
Throughout the episode, among many astute and intelligent musings on Caroline, the hosts kept repeating the mistaken assertion that she was a ‘girlboss’. If you don’t know who she is, well, I both pity and envy you, but at her core, she is an influencer with literary ambitions and has failed to deliver them despite many occasions to do so. Calling Caroline, an upper-middle-class white woman, a ‘girlboss’ is an easy mistake, but you’ve mistaken privilege for entrepreneurial ambitions. To grow up as one of capitalism’s blessed offspring does lead to the belief it’s marvellous, but this is not the vibe that she radiates. She is a flop, performatively so. Perhaps this is a variety of girlboss, the act of making a falling-on-your-face fashion, but it’s a different concept. We can workshop some new terms, but ‘girlboss’ is taken and not applicable to Caroline, who offered up the excellent observation that it’s hard to be a writer and a party girl (it is). To label her a ‘girlboss’ is to confuse being cushioned from the potential full extent of your consequences. Caroline’s brand of annoying is not about productivity. She is not about giving those shareholders a healthy return. Her Instagram thrived on long captions and old money aesthetic, not spon-con. Don’t sully the waters. Language does evolve, but ‘girlboss’ is sacred.
The ‘Scammer’ author is more Edie Sedgwick than Sheryl Sandberg even wirh the caveat that Caroline being a potential muse to Andy Warhol is far-fetched. She’s also an expensively educated idiot, a mystery about whether its on purpose or an act.
If she were a girlboss, her book would be a manual on how you, too, can purchase her unpurchasable life because Caroline’s life is the kind that a girlboss would like to sell to impressionable followers. Her Instagram popularity came from painting a WASPy dream world, but it later broke down when she became the subject of a 2019 Cut piece by her ex-friend Natalie, which really just reinforced my point; you can’t buy what she’s selling. If anything, she’s not offering it but just showing it off, which again is another rant! Honestly, I have to stop going on about her because I could go on for hours with my embarrassingly complex feelings on her, and to respect my audience, I must stop.
Perhaps this is a self-interested plea because if Caroline Calloway is a girlboss, I worry what on earth could make me; a fellow flop. I do not want to be a girlboss. My life is probably worse because I avoid being a girlboss at all costs. There’s a whole list of things I’d prefer to be called before I get slandered as a ‘girlboss’, like wastrel, fool, disgrace, buffoon.
Anything but a Thatcherite!!!!!!!!