The girlbossiest thing I ever did

The girlbosses got some things wrong, but let’s remember some things we got right

Years ago I was at a swanky event in New York with one of my fellow girlbosses. 

The woman was a force of nature. 

She’d flown in from Europe and boldly stated that she did not do jet lag. We both travelled business class but shared a room because we wanted the girltime, not because we needed to save money. Every morning at 6am she’d wake me with a flakey chocolatine and drag me to the gym to do deadlifts. Then she’d check in on her many Facebook groups while power walking on the treadmill with the incline set to max. 

I was in total awe. (Still am.)

She had a full-time chef, several personal trainers, plus enough support in her business to form a soccer team. She picked up every bill without making a big deal of it, and always treated me as her equal. 

One night at dinner we were finishing up our seviche tostadas and salty margs, I looked down at the plate and said, “Okay, Kim! Which one of us is going to finish this last taco?”

“Why?,” she said, letting the question hang. “Do you actually want to eat more?”

I could not believe it. Even though there wasn’t enough food left to box up, and zero chance we were going to eat a day-old fish taco in a formerly crunchy shell, I could not imagine just leaving it on the table. The idea made my brains explode. I walked out of the restaurant drunk on this simple act, and strutted around for days with this new perspective on the choices I could now afford to make. 

So what if we ordered a bit too much food? I can afford to skip leftovers, and I don’t have to punish myself for it. 

This is one thing girlbossery got right. We created a cultural movement around liberating women from scarcity thinking and teaching them to stop settling for table scraps. It’s one reason that, when my boyfriend calls me “GB,” I take it as a compliment. He’s recognizing me being powerful and doing important things in the world, changing the story for women. 

…but the message also got warped. 

Girlbossery is also an industry that is notorious for extracting money from the same people it proposes to help. And it’s just one of the many paradoxes of the girlboss message, where we speak at length about time freedom and a life where you have more choices (both true!) but then hand you a business plan that requires eighty hour weeks and a team of three people. 

When I read the survey results from last week’s poll about The Girlboss Apology Tour, it was clear many of my subscribers see this paradox. No surprise a lot of you said, “I want to know if there is a legitimate business here or if it’s all made up and I should leave the cult.”

I hear you there, Friend. 

It’s a confusing world out there and I want to help you untangle it. Not so you can forgive me, but so you can forgive yourself—for all the times you trusted someone you shouldn’t have, the times you fell for the persuasion even when it was right there in plain sight, the number of hours you are working when is seems to be so easy for everyone else, the business you thought you would have but you don’t yet, the courses you bought on a whim and never got past the first video, the times you abandoned yourself in order to find belonging in this crazy industry. 

That’s where the forgiveness starts, with each of us accepting that we are all just learning, including us girlbosses! We were all trying to find our way under capitalism and almost everyone’s path is twisty, and includes a lot of backtracking and trying again. Let’s not forget, the most successful people in business did it by bulldozing entire cultures and wrecking the planet. 

Comparatively, we’re doing much better, even if we have so much healing to do and so far to go. 

I’ll be sharing lots of my best girlboss stories on the Tour, and I’m so grateful for everyone who answered my poll. You’re helping us shape the summit so that it can help you finally exhale, come back to self-trust, and move forward building the business that only you can build. 

If I could just nudge you a little bit in that direction, I would call the tour a success.

XOT

Tarzan Kalryzian [she/they]
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