It’s half seven on a Wednesday and I’m already on my second oat-milk flat white, cherry vape fogging up the kitchen window while the kettle clicks off for the third time. My hair’s in that messy bun that looks like it’s about to slide off my head and my blue nails are tapping the mug like they’re trying to send Morse code. I’ve been staring at the same blank Google doc for twenty minutes because the pitch I was going to write feels dead. Proper dead. The kind of dead I used to call out in The Coven group chat when someone suggested another “empowering career advice” piece.
I used to eat that stuff up. Lean In. Girlboss. Hustle harder. You can have it all if you just want it enough. I bought the books. I shared the quotes. I stayed up till three writing threads that told other women they were failing if they weren’t scaling some imaginary ladder while still doing the Tesco shop and remembering everyone’s birthdays. I was good at it too. The likes rolled in. The comments called me inspiring. I felt like I was winning.
Then I blinked and I was twenty-nine with a therapist who had given up, a vape habit that could fund a small island, and a Sunday roast at my mum’s in Basildon that somehow always turned into me doing the washing up while the men watched the football. That’s when it hit me. The whole girlboss thing was never for us. It was a con dressed up in power suits and motivational quotes.
Gen Z clocked it first. They looked at the millennial women who had followed the script and saw the bags under our eyes. They saw us answering emails from the school run, smiling through another unpaid hour of emotional labour, then posting a filtered photo that said “living my best life”. They weren’t buying it. They started saying out loud what we were only whispering in group chats after two pints. The ladder is rigged. The prize at the top is more work. And the people selling the dream were the ones who already had nannies and cleaners.
I remember the exact moment I felt the shift. I was on the train back from a meeting in London, feet up on the opposite seat like the chaotic goblin I am, scrolling through yet another “how I built my empire before 30” thread. The comments were different this time. Younger women weren’t asking for tips. They were asking why anyone would want that life. Why would you spend your twenties proving you can do a man’s job plus all the jobs men never had to do? One girl just wrote “I’d rather be happy than impressive”. I snorted so loud the bloke opposite looked up. Then I felt that little twist in my stomach. Relief. Proper, guilty relief.
Because I had been impressive. I had the bylines, the Substack numbers, the TikToks that went off. I was the loud Essex girl who made it. And I was knackered. The kind of knackered that sleep doesn’t fix. The kind that makes you cry in Tesco because they moved the wine aisle and you can’t cope with one more small change.
The girlboss promise was simple. Work like a man, succeed like a man, but also be the perfect partner, the perfect friend, the perfect daughter who still goes home for roast. Do it all with a smile and a side hustle. Capitalism loved it. Two workers for the price of one, and the second one still does the laundry. We called it empowerment. They called it efficiency.
Look at the numbers if you can be bothered. Women still do the bulk of the unpaid stuff. The mental load. The remembering. The planning. The “I’ll just quickly” jobs that never end. We got the careers. We didn’t get the equal split at home. We just added another full-time job on top of the one we already had. And when we burned out they sold us wellness. A candle. A yoga class. Another flat white. Never the actual solution, which would be men doing their share and workplaces that don’t treat humans like machines.
I used to defend it. I’d say we had to play the game to change the game. That’s what they told us. Get in the room. Be twice as good. Don’t complain, just deliver. I delivered. I also started vaping in the toilet at work because I couldn’t take another meeting about “resilience”. Resilience is just a fancy word for suck it up.
Gen Z didn’t suck it up. They watched their older sisters and cousins and colleagues hit thirty-five looking fifty and thought, nah. They’re choosing different things. Purpose over promotion. Rest over hustle. Boundaries that actually mean something. They’re calling out the emotional labour in real time instead of waiting until they’re too tired to care. They’re not waiting for permission. They’re just opting out.
And now the millennials are catching up. Quietly. In group chats. Over wine that cost more than it should. We’re admitting it. The dream was sold to us when we were young and hungry and still believed hard work was enough. We didn’t know the house always wins. We didn’t know “having it all” meant doing it all. We thought if we just tried harder the system would notice. The system noticed we were cheap and reliable. That’s all.
I think about my mum sometimes. She worked. She raised us. She still does the roast every other Sunday like it’s her job and no one else’s. I used to think I was doing better than her because I had a byline instead of a cleaning rota. Now I see we were both doing the same thing. Just in different decades with better lighting.
The relief is real. It’s not pretty. It’s not the kind you post about. It’s the kind that arrives at 2 a.m. when you realise you don’t have to keep proving you can do everything. You can just do some things well and let the rest be someone else’s problem. You can say no without writing a thread explaining why. You can go home for roast and not feel like you’ve failed feminism because you didn’t network on a Saturday.
The Coven has been talking about this for months. We used to share the girlboss quotes. Now we share the screenshots of women saying they’re done. We laugh at the old versions of ourselves. Then we get quiet because we know how much it cost.
I don’t have a neat ending. I don’t have a five-step plan. I’m still a workaholic chaos goblin who thrives on deadlines and rage-tweets. I still check how many likes the other journos are getting. Old habits. But I don’t believe the con anymore. I don’t tell younger women they can have it all if they just want it enough. I tell them the truth. You can have some of it. You can have a life that doesn’t leave you hollow. You can choose the things that actually matter and let the ladder rot.
Girlboss is dead. Good. She was exhausting. She made us compete with each other while the people at the top laughed. She sold us a version of success that looked like freedom and felt like a second shift. We’re allowed to be relieved. We’re allowed to want something slower, something kinder, something that doesn’t require us to be superhuman just to be seen as equal.
I’m going to finish this flat white. I’m going to vape on the balcony and watch Hackney wake up. Then I’m going to text The Coven and tell them the pitch is dead. We’ll find something better. Something that doesn’t ask women to set themselves on fire to keep other people warm.
That’s the real win. Not the title. Not the likes. Just the quiet knowledge that we don’t have to keep running. We can stop. We can breathe. We can go home for roast and mean it when we say we’re fine.
The girlboss era is over. We survived it. Now we get to decide what comes next. And for the first time in years, that actually feels like a choice.