Sophia Amoruso, author of the memoir that the show Girlboss is loosely based on. Amoruso also writes for the show.
In Girlboss, created by Kay Cannon, a twenty-three year old San Francisco ingénue struggles to succeed in the business world. Nestled between the dotcom boom and the recession, the narrative begins in 2006 and ends in 2008, and is based loosely on the real-life memoir of Sophia Amoruso, who also writes for the show.
The title character, Sophia Marlowe (depicted by Britt Robertson) is emotionally unstable. With claims such as “adulthood is where dreams go to die,” within any given episode she gleefully purports to have figured out life, throws a tantrum, and succumbs to tears.
Sophia is racked with fears—being trampled by the rat race, conformity, and boredom. Necessity is the mother of invention for Sophia. After being fired from (yet another) job, and greeted by an eviction notice on her door, she resorts to dumpster diving for food. Fiercely independent, she refuses to ask assistance from her father.
What is a young woman with limited skills, no education, and no job to do? She discovers she can “flip clothes” and sell them online. With the help of her devoted best friend, Annie (Ellie Reed), Sophia launches an eBay vintage clothing company, Nasty Gal, and eventually her own website. The web allows her to be her own boss and become financially independent. The road to success is not easy. She fails repeatedly and is often her own worst enemy.
Along with executive producer, Charlize Theron, Cannon has worked to craft a multidimensional character fighting for a place in the male-dominated dotcom world. (Cannon has shared that they were told to make the show “less female focused”—even to bring in a male hero who could teach young Sophia how to be successful.) The show, she says, is “about trying to unravel this idea of what a woman should be.”
Sophia has it hard, and she is not likable, but this resistance to making her a smiling heroine gives the show strength. Sadly, Girlboss was unable to find a strong audience and Netflix announced recently the show would not be renewed for a second season. Reviews of Girlboss have been critical of the acerbic personality of Sophia as a stereotypical “twit” and a "bitch." But in many ways she offers a refreshing reprieve from the ever-smiling "girl" stereotype. In the end, she is boss, whether we like her or not. A second season might have allowed Cannon to develop this character further.
Sophia has it hard and she is not likable, but this resistance to making her a smiling heroine gives the show strength.
The show is well worth watching even if Sophia’s narrative ends without resolution. It is unrelenting in demonstrating both the possibilities, and struggles, of women in business, and how we continue to refer to those who stake their claims on success as "nasty."
GLOW is an equally brilliant series featuring multidimensional female characters trapped in a unidimensional Hollywood era. GLOW fictionalizes the short-lived, but very real, syndicated women’s wrestling series of the same name that ran from 1986 to 1989. The women wrestlers include actresses looking to break into male-dominated Hollywood, athletes seeking a platform to compete, and models trying to hold onto the fading careers of their youth. Showrunners Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch craft personas for the women to wear in the ring that reflect the sexism and racism of the Reagan era.
There is Tammé Dawson (Kia Stevens), “The Welfare Queen,” whose son is a student at Stanford. Jenny Chey (Ellen Wong) is cast as “Fortune Cookie,” the martial artist who has to tell the show’s director that she is Cambodian, not “Oriental” as he asserts. Arthie Permkumar (Sunita Mani) is a pre-med student who routinely questions being cast as “Beirut the Mad Bomber,” explaining she is not Arab, but Indian. Carmen Wade (Britney Young), a woman of size, is cast as “Machu Picchu, the Inca Giant.”
If the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling exploited the idea of cat fighting in the ring to appease the predominately male audience, the characters in the Netflix series dramatize the tensions that lie beneath the stereotyping. Outside of the ring the women work hard to avoid harming one another, negotiating feelings and individual and collective experiences. Flahive and Mensch allow each character to subvert the stereotype and demonstrate complexity and humanity.
Still from the trailer for GLOW.
Placing these shows in tandem reveals how women on television—and society—continue to be judged by looks and stereotypes, rather than by their intellect and abilities. Sophia could be the daughter of any of these women wrestlers. Each generation sacrifices integrity for economic gain, while privilege was, and continues to be, protected for those with money. But these shows are created by women who control the gaze, and as a result audience gets acquainted with a set of complicated, authentic characters.
Now more than ever, we need multifaceted representations of women. It is, after all, time to rumble.