Dear Millenials: We Can’t Girl-Power or #Girlboss Our Way to Financial Freedom
Trigger warning: this essay contains mentions of Intimate Partner Violence
If you grew up in the age of “girl power” like me, where the Spice Girls came on the scene and “swept the nation” as they say, and Destiny’s Child sang the iconic anthem “Independent Women” for the soundtrack of the 2000’s remake of Charlie’s Angels then you were fed a big, fat lie.
A glossy, beautiful, well-dressed lie, but a lie nonetheless.
As millennials, we were raised in the time of “Third Wave Feminism,” (though it has been discussed by many that the wave metaphor is misleading. Feminism doesn’t happen in waves. There are many kinds of feminisms and they’re happening in tandem. Feminism is not a monolith). This “wave” was born in response to Anita Hill’s televised testimony in 1991 when she came forward about Clarence Thomas sexually harassing her. In "Becoming the Third Wave" (1992) published in Ms. Magazine, Rebecca Walker wrote:
So I write this as a plea to all women, especially women of my generation: Let Thomas' confirmation serve to remind you, as it did me, that the fight is far from over. Let this dismissal of a woman's experience move you to anger. Turn that outrage into political power. Do not vote for them unless they work for us. Do not have sex with them, do not break bread with them, do not nurture them if they don't prioritize our freedom to control our bodies and our lives. I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.
It was just two years prior in 1989 that Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to describe the unique and layered way in which Black women experience sexism and racism inside our society’s structures and systems. But even with all of these incredible feminist leaders speaking up and out, and many writers from the so-called “Second Wave” like Gloria E. Anzaldúa, bell hooks, Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, and Maxine Hong Kingston writing extensively about Black women’s and women’s of color experience, white feminism managed to sell and profit from a watered down, marketable version of gender equality that centered white women.
We can draw a direct line of red lipstick from the advent of “Girl Power” in the mid-to late nineties, to what Andi Zeisler calls “Marketplace Feminism,” which spawned “Girlboss” in the mid 2000s. This seems to have been a response to, and protest of, the infantilization of (white) women that got laughs and views on television in the 1950s with shows like I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best. The intention of reclaiming the word “girl” and swapping its association with demure submission for power and authority, while attractive and full of potential, ended up becoming a hallmark of white feminism. Just like our suffragette ancestors, once again, white women failed to take Black women and women of color’s experiences into account.
It’s been brought to light by many Black activists, educators and writers that Black girls don’t even get to be “girls” in the first place because of the adultification of Black children. Much of the intended impact of Riot Grrrl and Girl Power fell flat due to the fact that the loudest voices were young white women from the suburbs and often ignored the voices and concerns of Black, trans, and queer folks. (It’s relevant and pertinent to note that today’s popular use of the word, “girl,” and “sis,” is African American Vernacular English (AAVE — which white people have no business employing), and it’s application is not the same as the use of “girl” when in reference to phrases like “Girlboss” and “Girl Power”).
As with all outcomes of the white feminist movement, “girlboss” gave white women the ability to paint a glossy sheen over the real, consistent, and often not glamorous work of fighting for gender and racial equity. Instead of actually acknowledging, confronting, and dismantling the structural barriers and hierarchies of white cisheteropatriarchy, white women would rather cosplay as Elle Woods, climb the corporate ladder, and look back at Black women and say, “What? Like it’s hard?”
It’s interesting to think about my own relationship with the word “girl,” and how it was a conscious choice to start referring to myself as a “woman.” It was in my early twenties when I started wondering to myself and aloud to my friends when is it appropriate to start referring to myself as a woman? The word felt unfamiliar, distant, mature, old, and also…gross. I associated the word “woman” with big, child-bearing hips, voluptuousness, and gaining weight — things I didn’t want to be, which goes to show my ingrained transphobia and fatphobia. I also subconsciously knew that in this society you are granted opportunities, respect, adoration, praise, and power only through remaining as small and conventionally attractive to the cis, white male gaze as much as possible.
Part of working to unlearn and heal this in my mid to late-twenties meant intentionally identifying as a woman, and correcting people when they would call me “girl.” While Black women are stripped of their femininity and often perceived as masculine and threatening to the white gaze, cis white women are tasked with unlearning the ways white supremacy wants to keep us in an infantilized state perpetually submitting to the fragile dominance of cis white men.
In an interview with Huffington Post (I don’t love the writing and viewpoint of this author, but linking the article for reference) Andi Zeisler recalls, “I was certainly referring to my contemporaries as girls well into my freshman year before I started noticing that a lot of the people I respected and looked up to were using the term ‘woman,’” Zeisler said. “It’s sort of alien. I remember it sounding very alien in my own mouth, and I felt like I was tripping over myself when I said it. I felt really self-conscious about it.”
This resistance to the word “woman” that many of us experience is in part, I believe, the result of an inferiority complex that we inherit from our commitment to the construct whiteness (I learned this language and about this concept from the education of Kenya Budd, an equity and inclusion consultant in Portland, Oregon, and the podcast Seeing White). We are forever innocent in the eyes of white supremacy, which creates harm in many distinct ways.
One is that we historically choose to wield this power through ugly and violent means as we have seen with white women calling the cops on Black people for just existing and living their lives from Emmett Till to Christian Cooper.
Another is that while “playing dumb” (I Love Lucy) and not making waves (insert the “cool girl” trope here) allows us to remain in cis white men’s good graces, we simultaneously bargain away our dignity and humanity in exchange. Ironically, this infantilization is sometimes a component of what’s required of any “girlboss” who strives to achieve a position of upper management or CEO status.
This infantilization can also create harm when it comes to our relationship with our finances. I know my relationship with money, math, and numbers has been corrupted because our society is informed by the sexist belief that girls and women are illogical and “bad” with numbers and math, while men are logical, rational, and “good” with numbers and math. The imprint left on my subconscious is that I can’t handle looking at, or dealing with, my finances without my Dad or a male figure telling me what to do.
Of course, I recognize the privilege that lies in having a Dad who taught me financial literacy, but what was lacking in my education was understanding the way trauma and living within systems of oppression impact my relationship with money. Although I knew spending money on a credit card without having a secure way of paying it off was not financially sound, I still ended up in $15,000 of debt of which I’m still paying off. Is it because I’m “bad with money”? Or are there layers and nuance to our money decisions that are tied to our trauma, conditioning, and experiences within white cisheteropatriarchy?
Yep, it’s the latter.
While the intended aim of “girlboss” and “marketplace feminism” was for the corporate world to take women in leadership more seriously, and to “break the glass ceiling” and secure a “seat at the table,” what ended up happening was a re-branding and reinforcing of the same, tired, oppressive structures of white cisheteropatriarchy, but only with a handful white women in charge. As white women we’ve tried all the strategies to “get ahead in a man’s world,” and still, ultimately, “only 2% of all venture capital goes to female founders, and just 0.2% of all venture funding goes to female founders of color, a rate that has barely budged in the four years since #MeToo and #TimesUp transformed the national dialog.”
Even so, is venture capital what we really want? Rewa Phansalkar made this great point in response to Charlotte Palermino’s Instagram post about women in business: "Also let's talk about how we want to dismantle systems of capitalist patriarchy that create Venture Capital and ‘positions of leadership’ that concentrate wealth - girl or boy, we want #NoBoss.”
What we really need to interrogate is why we are fighting for “breaking the glass ceiling,” or “a seat at the table” when it’s built on toxic work environments, violent and abusive exploitation and manipulation, wage theft, and suffocating hierarchies?
The phrase “breaking the glass ceiling,” was popularized in the 1980s when Marilyn Loden, an American management consultant and diversity advocate, pointed out that women were not advancing in their careers in no part due to their own lack of expertise or drive, but because of invisible barriers. “Girlboss” and “marketplace feminism” conjures the imagery of “breaking the glass ceiling” without addressing the structures that created that ceiling in the first place.
This faux feminism is exemplified in Sophia Amoruso’s public persona and career trajectory. We can’t talk about “Girlboss” without talking about the person who coined the term. The same year Amoruso landed the cover of Forbes as one of the richest self-made women in the world her company, Nasty Gal, filed for bankruptcy. In our society we glorify the idea of “self-made,” as well as being featured in Forbes, but we need to question the people who are idolized and printed in magazines, and who we’re taught to listen to for business advice. Amoruso’s legacy is one of hyper-individualism and abuse.
“Girlboss” and “Marketplace feminism” implies that women empowerment means doing what cis men can do (even if it’s just as toxic, exploitative, and abusive). LOOK, MOM! I CAN EXPLOIT THE FUCK OUT OF MY EMPLOYEES TOO! YAY! EQUALITY!
But equality is never what we want. Equitable outcomes are what we want. There’s a difference.
As white women we have a responsibility to unlearn and heal from the way internalized white supremacy manifests in these ways. There is a process of healing and integration that needs to happen for those of us who are brainwashed to feel inferior in one way or another.
Reclaiming the word “girl” in and of itself isn’t a horrible idea. For me, healing my inner child and relationship to the many versions of “girl” inside of me has been crucial to me claiming my womanhood and embodying my power and authority in a non-oppressive, non-white-supremacist sense. It has also been an ongoing journey of questioning what exactly I mean when I say, “I’m a woman,” because my gender identity (anyone’s gender identity) has nothing to do with genitalia contrary to what we are taught to believe.
Power, authority, and leadership are not inherently oppressive, and in order to build a more equitable world we all need to heal and redefine our relationship with these words. This process requires nuance and context, and it will look different for all of us.
I’m also thinking about how many of the women I work with take issue with claiming the identity of “entrepeneur.” Of course, this word is associated with corporate greed and capitalism, so understandably it’s not a word that many who have anti-capitalist values are fond of. But being an entrepreneur is not inherently oppressive either. Some of my favorite entrepreneurs include Ericka Hart and Chani Nicholas who do ground-breaking work while maintaining their anti-oppressive values and integrity.
Perhaps a more subtle way that “girl power," and “girlboss” has had a back-handed impact is through the belief that everything should be “50/50 in relationships,” as Beyonce sings in “Independent Women,” even when women are typically the ones who get paid less due to systemic inequity and are doing the majority of emotional/invisible labor in relationships and in the home.
And for those of us single ladies we were fed the lie that if our personal income fails to sustain our needs and more, then we don’t deserve the labels “empowered,” “strong,” and “independent.” Instead, we’re bad with money, lazy, and deserve to be poor.
The shoes on my feet (I bought it)
The clothes I'm wearing (I bought it)
The rock I'm rocking (I bought it)
'Cause I depend on me if I want it
The watch I'm wearing (I bought it)
The house I live in (I bought it)
The car I'm driving (I bought it)
I depend on me (I depend on me)
-“Independent Women,” by Destiny’s Child
Let me be clear though this isn’t to completely dismiss the impact of Destiny’s Child or Spice Girls. I have all the love and respect for both groups. They raised me for goddess sake!
But as I wrote in this essay for Terra Incognita Media, “...true empowerment and freedom come from understanding history, understanding our place in it, and subverting our culture of elitism, narcissism, exclusionary independence, patriarchy, imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism (as bell hooks called it)...”
I would also like to add that true empowerment comes from healing our relationship with money and resources. The society we live in always wants us to outsource our feelings and experiences. Whether we’re happy, sad, angry, lonely, or bored we are coerced into buying something to “fix,” add, or subtract to our current state of being.
Empowerment for me has come when I’ve been able to practice presence because it’s in the practice of presence that I can make clear, discerning, informed decisions instead of decisions based in fear, the need for control, or scarcity.
Empowerment is truly about knowing when we need help and asking for it.
Empowerment is assessing and acknowledging your resources, assets, and skills, knowing what you can offer others, and knowing where your boundaries and limits lie.
Empowerment is not about being able to buy whatever you want, and it’s not about massing and hoarding the wealth of billionaires.
Empowerment is about redistributing our resources and wealth.
Empowerment is about being able to recognize what’s in your control and what’s not.
Empowerment is not about controlling your emotions, but sitting with them and turning “Silence into language and action” as Audre Lorde wrote.
In our society to achieve the “independent woman trope,” is nearly impossible. Economically we are set up to fail: we are paid less, funding for child support and care is abysmal and for many non-existent, we don’t have bodily autonomy, and all of this leads to being under-resourced when it comes to fleeing violence.
As a survivor of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) I know how dire it is to have the money, resources, network, and ability to escape a violent relationship. When I graduated college in 2011, I moved in with my then boyfriend because it was cheaper to live with him. After experiencing abuse, I didn’t tell anyone out of fear of judgment and shame. I was also unaware of what “Intimate Partner Violence” was at the time, so I managed to minimize what had happened. This is also a brilliant survival strategy that trauma survivors employ in order to, well, survive. I quietly saved my money and began applying for jobs outside of Missouri.
Although I always wanted to travel and move to the desert after reading Desert Solitaire (in hindsight Edward Abbey is a sexist, racist asshole and no idol of mine), it also seemed like the only way I could end and escape that relationship was to move out of the state. When I read the email that I had been accepted to be an outdoor educator for a program near Moab, Utah I cried tears of joy and relief. I could leave.
As a white, cishet woman from an upper middle class background I had a lot of privilege to be able to physically remove myself from that situation. I had a car, a family to help me move, and money saved up from a steady job as a Montessori teacher.
Free From, an organization that supports the movement against gender-based violence, reports that “1 in 4 women and 1 in 2 trans folks experience IPV in the U.S., and the #1 obstacle to safety for survivors is financial security. This means that IPV is a systemic economic issue, making all of us responsible to support survivors’ healing.”
The lie we’ve been told is that we can just “girl power,” or “#girlboss,” our way to financial freedom, and it’s just not true.
The cultural obsession with being an “independent woman” is in some ways a manifestation of the myth of “pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps” that this imperialist, death-machine country was built on. One of the characteristics of white supremacy culture, as laid out by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, is “individualism.”
However, this article adds context and nuance to the economic benefits and disadvantages of being single, married, and polyamorous in our society. There is no shame in needing help, asking for it, and accepting the aid and resources that are available to you.
Now, I’ll be the first to scream-sing and dance to “Independent Women,” whenever and wherever it starts playing whether at a house party or in a grocery store, but do we really want to be solely independent women? Or do we want to be INTER-dependent women?
Being independent women implies being “self-made,” which is at the heart of this lie. There is no such thing as “self-made” inside racialized capitalism in which this country was literally built off the backs of enslaved Black labor, where enslavers, our white ancestors, were paid reparations for “their loss” when slavery was “legally” (but not truly) abolished, and where as white people we still benefit from that wealth today, as well as the racist policies, systems, and processes that are in effect like gentrification and redlining.
This cult of individualism and preoccupation with “going at it alone,” is not only a nearly impossible agenda, but it’s also incredibly ableist and goes against our human capacity. At some point, and/or many points throughout our lives, we will need someone else.
In an interview with Eve L. Ewing, Mariame Kaba said, “You’re going to burn out. It’s not humanly possible for you to just be your Lone Ranger self out there in the world…”
Mia Mingus, a disability justice activist, said this in an interview with Srinidhi Raghavan: “Interdependence moves us away from the myth of independence, and towards relationships where we are all valued and have things to offer. It moves us away from knowing disability only through 'dependence', which paints disabled bodies as being a burden to others, at the mercy of able-bodied people’s benevolence.”
In 2020, Andrew Van Dam wrote an article about how millennials are the unluckiest generation. And in “Making it Millenial,” the authors describe how “Millennials’ coming of age corresponds with a global financial meltdown, a housing bust, the worst recession in the United States since the Great Depression, and soaring higher education costs.”
If financial freedom and bodily autonomy are supposed to “trickle down” from systems like Wall Street and the Supreme Court, but never actually trickle down for anyone except white women, maybe it's time to stop putting faith in the politicians who run the systems, "turn your silence into language and action" as Audre Lorde said, reimagine your relationship to your money, resources, and body, and support the abolition of these systems altogether.
To everyone reading this: you are not in the situation you’re in because you’re “bad with money,” or because you didn’t manifest hard enough. The oppressive structures we live within, the family you were born into, and the trauma you’ve experienced (and are experiencing) all impact and inform your financial reality and well-being.
I’m always drawn back into an internal discussion about fate and free will when discussing the landscape of these oppressive systems and what choices we have inside of them. When so much of our lives are out of our control, when so much of our livelihood rests in the white supremacist agenda of the Supreme Court, when these systems are literally set up to kill us at the hands of police — some faster than others — where and how can we access autonomy, choice, hope, pleasure, and true care and well-being?
I’m not a fatalist, not a nihilist, and not a toxic positivist (toxic positivity influencer?). I believe that there are things we can do as a collective, and there are things we can do as individuals to better the world and our circumstances. I would venture to guess that the best thing we can do on an individual level to get closer to autonomy, choice, hope, pleasure, and true care and well-being would be to heal our internalized capitalism and white supremacy, and not be afraid to talk about taboos like money, wealth, and the redistribution of it.
Financial freedom absolutely won’t come from “girl power” or “girlbossing” our way to the top. But becoming a certified Trauma of Money facilitator taught me that one thing is for certain: “there is enough to go around and more.”
Things that have helped me heal my finances and relationship with money so far:
Coaching
Somatics: The Embody Lab and Somatic Experiencing
Understanding the Trauma of Money
Questions or comments? Email me at erinkmonahan.com or DM me on Instagram :)
If you’d like deeper support in healing your relationship with your money, resources, assets, and skills I invite you to join us inside my 8-week program, Healing Through the Second House.
