The ghost of girlboss past continues to haunt me.

As an unashamed millennial (yes, really), I remember all too well the impact girlboss culture had on me and many others while growing up. We firmly believed in the ‘we can do and achieve it all’ mentality that had us running towards burnout at a time when the term wasn’t as widely discussed as it is today.

We worked ourselves to the bone while devouring avocado on toast washed down with kombucha. We watched HBO’s Girls and vowed never to be a failed mess like Hannah Horvath and her crew of equally chaotic friends (although many of us could relate).

The girlboss era had good intentions, with its desire to motivate us all to reach our dreams with a pep in our step. But the toxic positivity that many of us wore with a badge of honour soon began to take its toll, and the girlboss era we once celebrated is now the butt of pretty much every Gen Z joke.

So much so, that we’re now seeing the antithesis of the girlboss being celebrated: the ‘girlfailure’.

Why ‘girlfailure’ is the anti-girlboss trend we can all relate to