Exploring a Tension
to be continued...
In my Substack feed this morning was an interesting article, In defense of the "girlboss", by Game A Galaxy Brain Matthew Yglesias.
I have no particular desire to add to the Lindy West Discourse,1 but one thing I’ve noted watching it play out is that the #girlboss is catching a lot of strays.
1 If you don’t know what I’m talking about, God bless. I will not even attempt to provide a summary. Maybe your favorite Large Language Model can help.
And not knowing what he is talking about, I did get some help from AI.
The Lindy West Discourse refers to the heated online debate sparked by her 2026 memoir Adult Braces. It centers on her reluctant agreement to open her marriage to non-monogamy at her husband Aham's insistence, despite initial resistance tied to her self-esteem struggles and body image history. Critics framed it as a betrayal of feminist principles, accusing her of submitting to male dominance under the guise of progressiveness, while defenders saw it as honest evolution amid millennial feminism's decline.
Yglesias continues,
West is a millennial and was a writer for (among other outlets) Jezebel, so she serves as a useful stand-in for a broad current of, as Helen Lewis put it, “Millennial Feminism.”
Millennial Feminism is new to me so I again turned to AI for some help.
Millennial feminism refers to the feminist movement shaped by those born roughly 1981-1996, often tied to the fourth wave starting around 2012. It emphasizes digital activism via social media, intersectionality addressing race, class, sexuality, and more, alongside issues like body positivity, sexual harassment (#MeToo), and reproductive rights.
Yglesias continues,
Sophia Amoruso, the founder of Nasty Gal and the author of the literal Girlboss book, is also a millennial. Sheryl Sandberg, arguably the quintessential girlboss, is not a millennial, but I think it’s fair to say that her 2012 book “Lean In” was primarily addressed to millennial soon-to-be mothers.
Later in the article Yglesias comments on a tension that I have recently become aware of.
I think it was, in fact, perfectly reasonable and correct for women to insist on fair treatment without becoming radical critics of capitalism, because capitalism is basically fine and good.
Looking at this through through my metamodern lens, capitalism is not basically fine and good. Capitalism is the economic system of Modernity, a civilization built primarily by men and one that is now at growing risk of collapse. It seems to me that, generally, women see this more clearly than men.
More from Yglesias:
On both the politics and the substance, the cultural turn against girlbosses was a mistake.
And more from AI with metamodern both/and framing:
The cultural turn against girlbosses was a mistake because it discarded a vital framework for female ambition and leadership at a time when women still face entrenched sexism, glass ceilings, and underrepresentation in power structures, replacing genuine empowerment with cynical backlash that often masked misogyny or anti-capitalist posturing. Popularized by Sophia Amoruso and echoed in Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In,” girlboss culture—flawed as it was in its neoliberal individualism and occasional exclusion of non-privileged women—nonetheless inspired millennial feminists to pursue careers aggressively, normalizing female CEOs, entrepreneurs, and executives in a landscape where progress remains uneven. By framing it as inherently toxic or performative, critics fueled a cultural permission slip for schadenfreude over women’s failures, alienated young women from aspirational role models, and handed ammunition to anti-feminist narratives that dismiss all female advancement as elitist, ultimately stunting collective momentum toward gender equity in favor of vague calls for “systemic change” without practical tools.
The cultural turn against girlbosses was not a mistake because it rightly exposed the neoliberal, individualistic flaws of this branded feminism, which prioritized white, privileged women’s personal hustle over collective systemic change, ignoring intersections of race, class, disability, and exploitation. Figures like Sophia Amoruso embodied its hypocrisy—building empires on toxic workplaces, racial discrimination, underpaid labor, and firing pregnant employees—while promoting “empowerment” aesthetics that commodified ambition without addressing unequal pay, harassment, or barriers for non-elite women. By framing success as a solo grind within capitalism, it perpetuated hustle culture’s burnout and white supremacy undertones, undermining true solidarity and paving the way for more inclusive, anti-patriarchal activism that demands structural reform rather than patronizing pep talks.
There is much to explore in all this which I hope to do in future articles on our new Substack, Final Waive Feminism.