History Main / GirlbossFeminist

Though aspects of her character have been around for much longer, the girlboss feminist remains one of TheNewestOnesInTheBook. She exhibits a particular kind of backlash that started around the late [[TheNineties 1990s]] but only became recognized in mainstream culture around the 2010s.

* ''Series/{{Creepshow}}'': In the segment '"[[Recap/CreepshowS1E8LydiaLanesBetterHalf Lydia Lane's Better Half]]" the titular [[HighPoweredCareerWoman Lydia Lane]] is accused of being one by her employee/lover Celia after she passes her over for a promotion in favor of a man with less experience. Lydia rebuffs it, but when she's trapped in an elevator [[spoiler:[[AccidentalMurder with Celia's corpse]]]] she flips out and reveals that she did pass her up for the promotion because she couldn't stand the thought of a woman she mentored surpassing her success and that only ''she'' is allowed to "be her".

* ''Series/TheWhiteLotus'': Nicole Mossbacher is the CFO of a wellness brand and has, according to her, feminist goals. Despite this, she's accused of having "rode the wave of #MeToo" to her current position just to try and redeem the company's image by having a female executive. She then immediately lashes out at Rachel for describing her that way, suggesting that it was accurate. She also suggests to Paula and Olivia that her son Quinn is the "real victim" because he's afflicted by the WhiteMansBurden.

** ''ComicBook/PoisonIvy2022'': The villain of issues #7 and #8 is Beatrice Crawley, the CEO of a fracking company called [=FutureGas=]. To the public, Crawley is a proud feminist and head of an eco-friendly company. However, one of her employees accuses her of not being very kind to her female employees when they ask for maternity leave and her company is revealed to be infecting people with chemicals that turn them into plant monsters. [[spoiler:Crawley is also a former assistant professor to Dr. Jason Woodrue, Ivy's former mentor, and is deliberately pushing her company's technology to continue his twisted vision.]]

* Creator/LindsayEllis discusses this in her video essay "Woke Disney". Ellis maintains that most of Disney's attempted "updates" of its [[Franchise/DisneyPrincess princess characters]] feel like empty pandering to some extent, because while the heroines have a more active role than before they don't address the underlying social issues in their respective movies. As she puts it regarding ''Film/Aladdin2019'': "The monarchy isn't bad, it just needs a female CEO".

[[RuleAbidingRebel She's a feminist in "word", but in "deed" her feminism is shallow and seldom extends beyond white, heterosexual, wealthy, upper-class, conventionally successful women]] (or, in extreme cases, [[ItsAllAboutMe herself and no one else]]). She might be a BourgeoisBohemian, but her area of focus is usually limited to money, fame, and other traditional hallmarks of success. She's a master at co-opting trends, particularly social justice movements, and manipulating them to suit her own selfish ends. This may overlap with the AlphaBitch if she proclaims the importance of social issues while doing nothing to help people like her.

* ''Series/TheWilds'': Gretchen Klein is a former college professor who tries to prove that women are better than men at leading society by forcibly stranding two groups of teenagers (one composed of girls and the other boys) on deserted islands and monitoring their progress. [[InsaneTrollLogic Even discounting the fact that surviving on a deserted island requires a very different skillset than leading society]], Gretchen deliberately stacks things against the boy group by using boys who all have criminal records, including one domestic abuser, so she can prove her "hypothesis" right. She is barely fazed, and even happy to learn that said domestic abuser assaulted one of the boys because it supports her views. Also, for all her feminist rhetoric, [[FemaleMisogynist she proves to be very dismissive to other women,]] dismissing her female colleagues as "timid-minded" for not going to the lengths she's willing to go to, [[EvilHasABadSenseOfHumor making insensitive voyeur jokes when she sees one of her male subordinates monitoring the girls (who is only watching over them out of concern)]], and victim-blames Leah Rilke for being in a predatory relationship with a pedophile and expected her to be grateful for Gretchen stranding her on a deserted island because MiseryBuildsCharacter.

* In ''Series/BlackSnow2023'', Chloe Wolcott has milked her status as the female boss at a major company for all that it's worth, even as it becomes clear that Wolcott Industries is corrupt and that several high-level employees, including her father, were involved in the unsolved disappearance of a pair of trafficked boys from Vanuatu back in 1994. As Jim Cormack's investigation threatens to topple the company, Chloe begins cynically planning to use the scandal to shove her father out of the company completely. Nowhere in her plans is there any mention of whether or not she intends to discontinue Wolcott's use of migrant labor.

* ''WesternAnimation/PowerpuffGirls1998'''s one-time villain Femme Fatale [[DoesNotLikeMen hates men]] and claims to be stealing Susan B. Anthony coins for women's rights, even tricking the girls into being {{Straw Femenist}}s themselves so they'll leave her alone. However, it's later revealed that Femme Fatale [[ItsAllAboutMe only cares about herself]] and treats women with just as much disrespect as she treats men, even [[CopKiller injuring a policewoman]] and robbing a female bank clerk.

Though aspects of her character have been around for much longer, the girlboss feminist remains one of the NewestOnesInTheBook. She exhibits a particular kind of backlash that started around the late [[TheNineties 1990s]] but only became recognized in mainstream culture around the 2010s.

'''No real-life examples, please!'''

[[RuleAbidingRebel She's a feminist in "word", but in "deed" her feminism is shallow and seldom extends beyond white, wealthy, upper-class, conventionally successful women]] (or, in extreme cases, [[ItsAllAboutMe herself and no one else]]). She might be a BourgeoisBohemian, but her area of focus is usually limited to money, fame, and other traditional hallmarks of success. She's a master at co-opting trends, particularly social justice movements, and manipulating them to suit her own selfish ends. This may overlap with the AlphaBitch if she proclaims the importance of social issues while doing nothing to help people like her.

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Those archetypes had previously been an idealized form of female achievement; this one deconstructs some of the assumptions behind ShowingUpChauvinists. It often asks how free women "really" are in these corporate structures. While this ''can'' be TruthInTelevision, it's also notable that this is also a misogynistic trope. [[HighPoweredCareerWoman High Powered Career Women]] can and do empower other women, and it's hard not to see this as a suggestion to StayInTheKitchen.

Compare the StrawFeminist, who doesn't necessarily need to have power to portray feminism in a bad light.

* ''Series/FamilyLaw2021'': Abigail Bianchi is a [[PlayingWithATrope played with example]]. On the surface, she seems to be a straight example of this trope, being a bully who dresses up her meanness as girl power. However, as the series goes on and she's forced to work in a field where her abrasive attitude puts her at a disadvantage, she starts to show that she actually has principles and beliefs, but has been hiding them to further her career as a corporate litigator.

->''"What do you want me to say? I got blinded by my desire to see myself succeed, which, since I'm a woman, is actually very feminist. But now that Vance can't help me succeed, I realize the more feminist thing to do is to make sure he doesn't succeed either."''

* ''Magazine/PrivateEye'': Glenda Slagg is a parody of women who think and act like this. Ms Slagg is to be read as a successful well-rewarded [[UsefulNotes/BritishNewspapers newspaper columnist]] who uses the vocabulary of feminism and female empowerment, decries misogyny, demands the same pay and recognition as her male counterparts, and boasts of being an empowered woman. And in the next paragraph when boasting about her perfect home life, reveals this female solidarity does not extend to lowly people like her nanny or her cleaner. She complains the cleaner is too lazy for the £5 an hour she gets paid, and about her nanny's reluctance to be on call 24/7 when she is being given a generous opportunity to work unpaid in London, improve her awful English for free, and not to be in her native Slovenia.