There's Something About Her

Analyzing the girlboss as a social transgressor

Another girlboss has fallen. A few weeks ago, Cami Tellez (of Parade underwear) was unceremoniously removed from the company she started in 2019.

The details are spelled out the Insider exposé are interesting, but not groundbreaking: the capitalist obsession with growth at all costs led to an excess of product, leading to fire sales and an inability to turn a profit. The most interesting part was the author expressing reservations about the take-down throughout the piece itself.

Last year, I spoke about identity as a cudgel on TikTok, and how it's often the first shield of defense for people who are behaving badly. JVN resorted to it when they were criticized for queerbaiting (this didn’t prevent queer people from responding in kind). Any criticism of Jameela Jamil is deemed ableist, which I learned after I asked about her history with bees. Taylor Swift herself has been known to resort to this (there’s famously a special place in hell for women who don't support other women).

It was shocking to see Cami Tellez— founder and CEO, responsible for a $200 million dollar company and its 48 employees— responding to an interview request with "How could [you], a female journalist, condone another takedown of a female founder — especially a female founder of color?"

The formation of the girlboss is inherently tied to identity: it isn’t surprising that Tellez would accept the accolades that come with the label and then attempt to hide behind it when the company started failing.

In Glossy, Marisa Meltzer dives into the history of Glossier and founder Emily Weiss, and the formation of Weiss’ identity as a girlboss is threaded throughout the book. We’re told again and again how smart and beautiful Weiss is, which Meltzer wields as a sort of talisman: how could Weiss fail when she was so focused, so talented, and so pretty??

It’s facile to say people are fine with women marrying money, but not earning it, but the cultural fascination with Lauren Sanchez and the patron saint of sprinkle sprinkle, as well as the rise of soft life and tradwife accounts indicates something is up. The cultural reception follows an Icarus template, where each woman receives praise only to be later torn apart by the same people who exalted her. The pattern was seen with Weiss, Tellez, the founder of Away, the founder of The Wing, the founder of Nasty Gal, etc. It seems there was a distinct cultural pleasure in tearing them down after building them up, but I also acknowledge mistakes were made in every one of these instances. Each scandal was specific and I’m not defending these women in any way, just pointing out the cultural narratives around them are familiar.

The stories told by women in tech— the schmoozing, the dinners, the parties, the sick and weird world detailed in Uncanny Valley and Whistleblower—seem to indicate there’s a rot at the heart of the VC industry, and in 2023, female founders are still receiving only 2% of total capital available.

To me, the argument that people are hung up on the failures of the various girlbosses because they’re women is both true and not: in a way, I see the girlboss as a social transgressor. We know that the narratives around women in this country who “succeed” are specific, with OG female founders like Estee Lauder, Mary Kay Ash, and Jean Nidetch succeeding in industries seen as “traditionally female” (a horrible generalization, but we’re painting with a very broad brush).

We also know that female politicians are held to a different standard: when I was doing graduate focus groups on perceptions of women in power using female politicians from around the world, the answers boiled down to generalized misogyny: many people couldn’t put their fingers on why they hated HRC so much, but they knew she had bad vibes, “there’s just something about her”, “she seems smug”, etc. It’s not that the girlbosses are being punished for “trying to be men”, it’s more specifically that they’re receiving a uniquely female treatment when they do make mistakes. We see this outside of the business world as well— remember the reactions to Kristen Stewart having an affair with Rupert Sanders? It feels repetitive and trite to say women are held to a different standard by the public, but… it’s true.

The general public loves a success story, but they love a failure story even more. It’s disappointing that the Cami Tellez story barely made headlines, but again, we’ve seen this before. When women “step out of line” in any way, there will always be people clamoring to see them taken down a peg and celebrating when they flop. I’m of two minds about this: people make mistakes, people fail, people burn their companies to the ground every day. As always, I’m more curious about the stories we tell each other about how, why, and what it means.