RESTOCK ALERT: Just in time for your summer vacation, the Banned Books tote is back in stock.
Alt. title: Katie finally bites off more than she can chew and attempts a nuanced exploration of the Lean In, Girlboss cultural era.
13 years ago, Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. The following year, Sophia Amoruso published #GIRLBOSS.
The broad understanding of this period was that—for a few solid years—we widely embraced the edicts of “corporate feminism” or “Lean In feminism” or “Girlboss feminism,” so named for a societal shift that saw a recognition and celebration of women’s career ambition as a decidedly positive thing worthy of support and encouragement or, at the very least, a collection of sassy poly-blend T-shirts.
We tried it, and it didn’t work.
…but did we?
Diabolical Lies investigates.
Rhetoric in Our Current Moment
Clocking in from 2026 to check on how we’ve been feeling about women and men leaving their homes to earn money
“From Girl Boss to No Boss” in The New York Times (2025)
“Why young and old men are leaving the workforce at record rates” in The Washington Post (2026)
Beyond the Gap 2026: Redefining career success & compensation for women from Glassdoor
“The motherhood penalty isn’t empowering” by Stefanie O’Connell for The Purse (2026)
2013 Coverage of Lean In
February 2013 coverage, in the order discussed
“A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling” by Jodi Kantor for The New York Times (February 21)
“Maybe You Should Read the Book: The Sheryl Sandberg Backlash” by Anna Holmes for The New Yorker (March 4)
“Pompom Girl for Feminism” by Maureen Dowd for The New York Times (February 24)
“Lean In, Trickle Down: The False Promise of Sheryl Sandberg’s Theory of Change” by Bryce Covert for Forbes (February 25)
“Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In campaign holds little for most women” by Melissa Gira Grant for The Washington Post (February 25)
“Why Sheryl Sandberg is no Betty Friedan” by Michael Kazin for The New Republic (February 26)
“How to do outrage” by Irin Carmon for Salon (February 28)
“The Absurd Backlash Against Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’” by Michelle Goldberg for Daily Beast (March 1)
“Sheryl Sandberg isn’t the perfect feminist, so what?” by Jessica Valenti for The Washington Post (March 1)
«IT’S AT THIS POINT THAT LEAN IN ACTUALLY COMES OUT, ON MARCH 11»
“Is Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ the next great feminist manifesto?” by Nisha Chittal for Ms. magazine (March 13)
“What Lean In misunderstands about gender differences” by Christina Hoff Summers for The Atlantic (March 19)
“Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning In?” by Kate Losse for Dissent (March 26)
“Facebook Feminism, Like It or Not” by Susan Faludi for The Baffler (August 2013)
2014–2017 Coverage of Lean In and #GIRLBOSS
…more of the same
“#GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso Review” by Helen Lewis for The Guardian (2014)
» And a recent piece from Helen Lewis on the subject, “The Death of Millennial Feminism” by Helen Lewis for The Atlantic (2026)
“Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In philosophy doesn’t just ignore disadvantaged women, it hurts their cause” by Liz Bruenig in The New Republic (2015)
“What impact has Lean In had on women?” by Gianna Palmer for BBC (2015)
“Girlboss: A worrying caricature of women’s enterprise” by Karen Patel and Anne Graefer for The Sociological Review (2017)
A movie that came out around the same time, included here for no reason at all:
“Netflix’s First ‘Girlboss’ Trailer Looks Like a Female ‘Wolf of Wall Street’” by Sean Fitz-Gerald for Thrillist (April 3)
And the trailer for Girlboss, which debuted on April 21, 2017.
“TV Review: ‘Girlboss’ on Netflix” by Sonia Saraiya for Variety (April 17)
“Girlboss review: a tone-deaf rallying cry to millennial narcissists” by Julia Raeside for The Guardian (April 21)
“Girlboss is a feminist fraud” by Jennifer Wright in, um, the New York Post (April 22)
“What Does a Girlboss Look Like?” by Sophie Gilbert for The Atlantic (April 28)
“Take that, patriarchy! The horrific cack-handed ‘feminism’ of Netflix’s Girlboss” by Rachel Aroesti for The Guardian (May 10)
“How ‘Lean In’ Feminism Created Elizabeth Holmes and the Toxic Ladyboss” by EJ Dickson for Rolling Stone (2019)
“The Real Backlash Never Ended” by Molly Fischer for The New Yorker (2022)
The 2020 Nail in the Coffin
A representative sampling of coverage from 2020
“The fall of the girlboss is actually a good thing” for Business Insider
“Let 2020 be the year we get rid of girlboss culture for good” for Refinery29
“Slayed queens: the girlboss, dethroned” for The Spectator
“‘Girl boss’: When empowerment slogans backfire” for BBC
“The girlboss has left the building” for The Atlantic
Numbers ‘n Shit
Data mentioned, for you freaks who are into that sort of thing
Women in the Workplace 2025 from McKinsey & Company
The analysis of 2022 American Time Use Data that found that, for full-time workers, men get a month more per year of vacation compared to their women peers and that gender remains the primary predictor of this leisure gap discrepancy between full-time workers
The 2023 paper from The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas that found that if men were unable to marry, prime-age male work hours would fall by 7%
The Ambition Penalty by Stefanie O’Connell (2026)
Big Girls Don’t Cry by Rebecca Traister (2010)
The rise and fall of the girlboss: Gender, social expectations, and entrepreneurial hype (2025)
…and more
Articles that were part of my little media senty-A but didn’t end up being quoted or discussed in the episode, in chronological order
“Sheryl Sandberg is more of a feminist crusader than people give her credit for” (The Guardian, 2013)
“The corporate mystique” (The New Republic, 2013)
“How Feminism Became Capitalism’s Handmaiden” (The Guardian, 2013)
“Why corporate feminism is convenient for capitalism” (The Guardian, 2013)
“Sheryl Sandberg never claimed she was writing a feminist manifesto” (The Guardian, 2013)
“I wasn’t a fan of Sheryl Sandberg—until I couldn’t find a job” (The Atlantic, 2014)
“Why Sheryl Sandberg’s brand of feminism isn’t for me” (Vogue, 2014)
“How NastyGal’s Sophia Amoruso is Making Feminism Cool Again” (Business Insider, 2014)
“Instead of leaning in, I leaned out: why women still need feminism” (The Guardian, 2014)
“The failure of corner office feminism” (Time, 2015)
“Sheryl Sandberg’s divisive pitch to #LeanInTogether” (The New Yorker, 2015)
“Ivanka Trump Wants to See Women Shine at Work” (The Guardian, 2016)
“Feminism is cool now. But actually being a feminist is still really hard” (Vox, 2016)
“We’re Living in the Era of the Hypocritical ‘Feminist’ Boss” (Vice, 2017)
“Lady Boss of Me” (Slate, 2018)
“I spent a day in Girlboss’s millennial pink empowerment wasteland” (Jezebel, 2019)
“The girlboss has evolved into an even more powerful form” (Vice, 2019)
