Rhiannon Joyce

It was like work and life went into one and your life became your work and it became your identity.

Busy.

It was like a branding.

I'm so busy.

This is very much busy is the word that always comes front of mind for me or top of mind.

I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so busy.

It's like people wearing that as a badge of honor.

I think it's really important to acknowledge a lot of this culture of what was embraced was actually really fucking toxic.

oh yeah, like a lot of what was branded as ambition was straight up exploitation.

And maybe it wasn't in all of those businesses or maybe, you know, just pulling away from these businesses as a whole and looking at that culture of that era, it was absolutely laced in exploitation.

This was also backed by Kate Lindsay, who was the author of the Embedded Newsletter and host of ICYMI.

She also worked at Refinery29 in the heart of the Girl Boss era.

And she said a lot of what was branded as ambition was actually exploitation that you were okay with and the business was

with.

I think it's here, but I think it's framed differently.

And I think there's some really, really, really strong learnings, both positive and negative that we can take from this era.

I will say up top, basically when I read hashtag Girlboss 2.0,

my visceral response was quite negative because I think the term girl boss itself has a negative connotation.

So even in, honestly, in my own day-to-day life, if someone uses that term or even to describe me, I bristle.

Yeah.