If you consume any of the content from Hollywood produced in the last decade, you no doubt are familiar with the concept of the girl boss. This is now the main character in almost every film and television show, even creeping into video games. These days, gaming is as much about narrative as gameplay, and anywhere there are narratives being constructed or undermined, you will find girl boss. This character has even jumped into the pseudo-reality of the public square.

As usual, the Democratic Party is leading the way. Versions of girl boss are turning up in their response to what is happening in Washington. Ocasio-Cortez is waddling around the country doing the girl boss act in the hopes of running for the party nomination in 2028 and perhaps becoming the ultimate girl boss. Jasmine Crockett is making a name for herself as the black version of girl boss. This is when girl boss pretends to be a character on a daytime trash television show.

Even the old gals are getting in on the act. Elizabeth Warren no longer pretends to care about “working people,” whatever that means these days. Instead, she is doing her version of girl boss. She regularly turns up on social media explaining how things must be done, or she will call the manager. The old gal version of girl boss still has those vestiges of the Karen character that entertained and amazed during COVID. The Karen role was something of a proto-girl boss.

It is hard to know if this character started in the make-believe world of narrative content or if the creators of narrative content borrowed from reality. The content production mines have been run by women for a while now, so maybe the presence of girl boss simply reflects the creeping reality of girl boss. Like a terrible rash or a fungus, girl boss is slowly taking over everything. The reason girl boss is a type is because girl boss is springing up everywhere in late-stage America.

A good starting point for understanding this new character in the public square is New Hampshire congresswoman Maggie Goodlander. She won her seat in the 2024 election, defeating a libertarian goofball in the general election. Ms. Goodlander has immediately set about making a name for herself on social media, where she seems to spend a great deal of her time. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Goodlander understands how to play her chosen role in the drama of politics.

The first thing you will notice about Goodlander is that, like every girl boss, she is a calculating striver who seems to be operating from a script. Her career reads like a Hollywood sketch for the lead in a new television drama. The daughter of a rich local family, she started at Groton and then went to Yale. She joined the military to get what at the time seemed like an important credential. This was the peak of the forever war period, so every politician wanted that on their resume.

That is the thing about girl boss. In addition to being a relentless striver, she is just as relentless at box-ticking. For girl boss, it is never about accomplishing things in the conventional sense, as that is for peasants. Girl boss has a higher calling, so her focus is on ticking the boxes that the character requires. This is where the influence of Hollywood is clear. The women playing the girl boss character are following a script of sorts to create themselves as girl boss.

You see this in the post-college portion of her character profile. Her family were Bush Republicans, which is where she started ticking boxes. While she was in the Navy as an “intelligence officer,” which is the military term for desk jockey, she worked as a senior foreign policy advisor for Joe Lieberman and John McCain. Then she spent a year clerking at the Supreme Court and then a year at Skadden, a super-connected law firm that looks great on a political girl boss resume.

Frankly, if you were to describe the ideal millennial girl boss for politics, the resume of Maggie Goodlander would feel a bit over the top. Audiences might find this character to be too much of a Mary Sue, which is a young woman in films who is portrayed as free of weaknesses or character flaws. She always gets what she wants without ever having to suffer setbacks or experience self-doubt. The resume of Maggie Goodlander looks like it was written so the rest of the plot can happen.

Another feature of girl boss that you see with every iteration of the character is what you see in the bio of Ms. Goodlander. There is a lot of activity. Ms. Goodlander is a whirlwind of activity as a representative. Every day she is posting pictures of herself being girl boss somewhere. Her resume is one activity after another. She seems to have rushed from one ticked box to the other, as if having ticked the box, the only thing that mattered was moving on to the next box.

This is what makes girl boss so powerful and why she is proliferating throughout the managerial system. In managerialism, a resume is about where you were and what networks to which you are connected. It is never about accomplishments in the sense of leaving behind a product of your labor. Girl boss is the epitome of this mindset. When girl boss goes for the walk on the beach as part of the carefully planned photoshoot, she leaves no footprints in the sand.

This leads to the main flaw of girl boss. Anyone who must deal with girl boss in the wild knows why we invented a certain word that starts with “C.” Girl boss is just as relentless in her unpleasantness as she is about her ambition. That is because every relationship is a temporary means to an end. For girl boss, your value is in how you can help her tick the next box. If for some reason you are an impediment to ticking that next box, girl boss expects you to lose, just like all opponents of girl boss.

This is why girl boss always has that weird, synthetic face. It lacks the normal emotions we expect from a female of our species. Every picture of Maggie Goodlander looks like they stapled a smile onto a mask. That is because girl boss lacks anything resembling female compassion. Her mind is singularly focused on the game of going from one box to the next to become the ultimate girl boss. There is a reason no girl boss has a trail of former colleagues who speak well of her.

This is what makes girl boss the ultimate expression of managerialism. Success in the system is never about accomplishments in the tangible sense, because managerialism is a system that evolved to reduce risk. Accomplishing things brings risk, as new things bring new variables to manage. The makers and doers must be sublimated to the managers to minimize the risk they pose. This means the managers are the antidote to the doers and makers.

In such a system, never having done anything tangible is another one of those boxes on the resume, but this box must always remain unticked. Instead, the boxes for talking about those boxes and meeting about those boxes must be ticked. Girl boss is ideally suited for a world where everyone is expected to be good at forming consensus and sharing their feelings about things never allowed in the room. Girl boss makes the ideal manager in a system designed for managers.

Of course, girl boss also seems to be the ideal symbol of the end. The rise of girl boss has led to declining content from Hollywood. They made Snow White into girl boss, and audiences are still laughing at it. The sure sign a company is about to enter the death spiral is when girl boss arrives in the C-suites. The sudden rise of girl boss in Democratic Party politics comes as the party is on the ropes. President girl boss would surely mean the end of the American experiment.

For those looking for something positive out of girl boss, it is entirely possible that she is the Boudica of the alien tribe that rules America. Boudica was a queen of a British tribe who led a failed uprising against the Roman Empire in AD 60. She was a last-gasp effort to resist the Romans. Perhaps that is what we are seeing with the rise of girl boss in the Democratic Party. They are vying to go down in history as the last gasp of resistance to the forces of restoration.

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