This piece will talk about the modern Hollywood archetype of the girl boss, and why by its very existence it reduces women in cinema and makes them inherently stunted.
So to give you a quick summary the girl boss is a girl that takes charge, is in control, is usually fairly emotionless and needs no man. The idea of this character type comes with the idea of giving women more agency allowing them to have power and to be a dominating figure in a films narrative, in this sense the girl boss was supposed to be empowering. However, the fundamental issue with the girl boss is that it stops women being human, they may be powerful and in control but they are no longer allowed to have flaws or be well rounded characters, the character simply becomes they are great and in charge and that is where the exploration ends.
For the sake of this piece I want to look at two girl bosses side by side to show how the archetype has lost its way to the point of being parody at this point. Firstly lets look at the character of Sarah Connor from the Terminator franchise, Connor is a girl boss as she is in control she tells people what to do she fights Skynet and despite her fling with Kyle Reese at the start of the series she doesn’t need no man, she is a strong independent woman and mother. She is not immediately perfect at fighting terminators as she would be if the film was made today she has to train and work to get there, she is a flawed person but does everything she can to protect her son, she is human. Then you have Elodie, Millie Bobby Brown’s character in Damsel, in this film Elodie repeatedly says how she doesn’t need a man or want to get married as though having human wants and desires made you weaker, Sarah Connor had romance didn’t make her any weaker. Elodie preaches about the patriarchy and how she needs to be a figure head for all women, implying all women need to be activists and take to the streets otherwise they are enabling oppression, Sarah Connor fought the patriarchy and won she didn’t spend her time preaching. Finally and most damning of all where before I said Sarah Connor had to work to be a badass, Elodie just picks up a sword and bang she’s better than any soldier, why because she is a woman that’s why. It is reductive.
The modern girl boss archetype as a whole makes the idea of a female action hero or even a powerful woman generally inherently less human and takes it to such an extreme caricature like place that then makes the characters incredibly one dimensional and allows them no room to grow. The reason why Rey was a bad character in the new Star Wars films was because she was not a character you could root for as she didn’t have an arc she was just great and then saved the day that’s it there was no progression, no journey as there was with a Sarah Connor, Laurie Strode or Ripley.
The girl boss as an archetype reeks of work by committee or perhaps in Netflix’s case work by algorithm they go what do young women care about? Social justice, activism, breaking down gender norms. Can they be floored or need to grow as a person? No that would imply they weren’t inherently perfect that’s sexist. Can they want to be equal to men rather than better than them and needing to degrade them in order to make themselves look even better? No, once again that’s sexist wanting men and women to be equal that’s sexism if the female lead of your superhero franchise isn’t inherently better than all the male characters there that is problematic now- see She Hulk.
One would argue that the progressive idea of strong interesting and well developed female characters is being ruined by the girl boss archetype and that in many ways the view of women it presents is limiting and regressive
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