I first heard about #Girlboss, the part-memoir/part-inspirational guide for female entrepreneurs by Sophia Amoruso, when I randomly decided to listen to the audio book on a cross-country flight. It’s the story of how Sophia, the scrappy, rebellious, shoplifting, garbage-picking young adult became Sophia Amoruso, the founder and CEO of Nasty Gal, a vintage and vintage-inspired clothing business that started back in her garbage-picking days when she started selling vintage clothes on eBay. That story has now inspired a comedy on Netflix.
According to Deadline Hollywood, Netflix has announced that Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland, and The CW’s Life Unexpected) will be playing the titular “girlboss” in the 13-episode series. The story, written and executive produced by Pitch Perfect writer Kay Cannon, goes a little something like this:
It centers on Sophia (Robertson), a rebellious, broke anarchist who refuses to grow up. She stumbles upon her passion of selling vintage clothes online and becomes an unlikely businesswoman. As she builds her retail fashion empire, she realizes the value and the difficulty of being the boss of her own life.
With #Girlboss being a book, a podcast, a Foundation, as well as the inspirational arm of a thriving vintage clothing business, it only makes sense that the next step would be some sort of filmed adaptation. The fact that it’s a female-led, female-penned story about female entrepreneurship makes it super-awesome! The best part, however, is that the producers are all female. Charlize Theron’s Denver & Delilah production company is the company behind the show, and Theron and Cannon will be producing along with D & D’s Laverne McKinnon, director Christian Ditter (‘sup Token Dude!) and Amoroso herself. Shooting begins this month.
Here’s the thing: there seems to be a wave right now of privileged white women preaching the gospel entrepreneurship and telling us that anyone can make it as an entrepreneur so long as you “lean in” hard enough. While those hopeful words can be inspiring at first, the reality of how much easier it is to do all that when you’re white and already come from a comfortable background with a certain amount of privilege starts to set in, and you realize that “anyone” usually means white, at-least-semi-affluent women.
Would a dumpster-diving, rebellious petty thief been allowed to parlay selling clothes on eBay into a multi-million dollar fashion business if she were a woman of color? I’m not sure. However, what I love about Amoruso is that she genuinely did start from nothing, and she used the Internet to level the playing field for herself in a really smart way, building her business entirely through the free marketing of social media. She’s about as close as we can come to seeing a young woman with very little make something extraordinary of herself.
Even better? Her success seems to spring from genuinely caring about the people who buy her clothes. Since back in the day when she was selling clothes on eBay and using MySpace to build a community, she’s always taken the needs and wants of other women seriously. Now, through things like #Girlboss and its myriad permutations, she’s trying to help other women achieve success by letting them know that you can be eating bagels out of the garbage one minute and running a company the next, as long as you have the drive, are willing to work harder than anyone else who works for you, and treat people kindly and with respect.
I’m looking forward to #Girlboss on Netflix, and hope that it inspires even more women to go after what they want in life.
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