As a little girl, I can remember dreaming about the career I would have one day more than I dreamt about being someone’s wife or mother.
I idolized the women I saw on my TV who were musicians, politicians, models, authors, scholars, and more. Whether I realized it or not, Black sitcoms and watching characters like Raven Baxter, Khadijah James, and Moesha Mitchell all showed me it was okay to have creative dreams and be ambitious about achieving them.
I developed an early relationship with what it meant to work hard, not just in an aimless way that left me feeling used, but in an intentional way that helped my dreams become real. The classroom was my first testing ground to explore just how far my own work ethic could take me, and it set a deep precedent in my mind around what I alone could earn for myself.
It’s not surprising then that, as an adult, I’ve juggled building not one but three careers at once, and am often overwhelmed by my own passion and capacity to want to do more.
I can close my eyes right now, literally while I’m writing this, and the first vision I’ll honestly see is of me doing the work that I love at a larger scale than I’m doing it right now.
For women of color, Black women especially, our relationship to work has always been different. We’ve always had to work since the beginning of this country. We’ve had fewer options around how we want to work, while simultaneously being some of the most genius thinkers and leaders that exist. We’re often forced to work, or to work in ways that make us feel used, while also balancing this deep desire to build and be changemakers.
So when conversations started shifting in my mid to late twenties toward Black women living softer, seeking luxury, and collectively turning our backs on “girl boss” ideology, I felt both intrigued and conflicted.
The push for Black women to work less, rest more, and experience softer lives was a message I immediately understood. I knew what it felt like to be overlooked, underpaid, and punished for working hard even when it saved the day of everyone around me. I grew up watching my single mother work multiple jobs just to take care of us. I knew firsthand how unfairly we were expected to keep showing up and provide “magic” solutions to a world that refused to see us.
But I also knew that the times I felt the most safe and the most in control of my own life were because of my work, and the doors I was slowly starting to pry open for myself because of my ambition.
Is it bad to still want to be a girl boss?
I think our real issue with the girl boss movement is that it is performative work seen through the lens of white women. It’s motivational “you can do this, girl!” messaging usually from an out-of-touch female CEO largely thriving off her own privilege, or that of her rich husband. It’s the promotion of work culture without any of the depth, risk, or reality of why women are working in the first place.
Naturally, the girl bossification of the 2010’s pushed us toward the other end of the spectrum, where we started asking if we actually needed to be the boss in order to do work we cared about.
But by the 2020’s, the conversation about the right for women to rest and live softer morphed into rigid ideas around womanhood, palatability, and sometimes full conservatism. None of which ever made sense in the “Independent Woman” world Destiny’s Child told me about.
Understandably, we’ve gotten to a place where we don’t want to do anything at all, even if that means closing the door on the careers we once dreamt of having as little girls.
The conversation between these two extremes continues, most recently stirred up by entrepreneur Emma Grede and her book “Start With Yourself”. During her promotional tour, she spoke openly about what it actually looks like for women to embrace hard work and the uncomfortable truths and sacrifices that come with choosing to do so. It’s messaging she’s always led with, and it speaks to the deepest part of me that has been driven by an ambitious goal for as long as I can remember.
Beyond Emma, I also think of Beyoncé, Michelle Obama, Cardi B, Quinta Brunson, Stacey Abrams, Elaine Welteroth, Tracee Ellis Ross, and more who have shown me what it looks like to work for something you believe in. I think of how they’ve modeled how important it is to be unrelenting when it comes to your work if you’re passionate about it.
I think of how some of them have ventured into partnership and motherhood, some haven’t at all. I see how they vacation, and experiment with wellness treatments, how they evolve and give to those they care about. They’ve all molded unique lives around themselves, without sacrificing their desire to work.
And they’ve inspired me to figure out what my own version of that could look like.
So, what’s the balance?
As much as I consider myself a high-ambition girlie, I’m also very thankful that in this day and age there are better ways to work smarter than purely working harder. The traditional model of what hard work looks like has changed, and some of the grueling markers of success that we needed to achieve decades ago aren’t as big of a requirement.
I won’t be giving up my ability to work from home or from any time zone I choose. I hate a calendar full of meetings if I can avoid it. I don’t aspire to climb the ladder in someone else’s corporate space.
But I do still want to work.
The soft life I envision for myself doesn’t look like a world without productivity or doing labor on behalf of others. I honestly don’t know if I could perpetually vacation and really feel content. Instead, it looks like welcoming help, having an abundance of options, always knowing I can choose something else, and not always having to be in charge if I truly don’t want to be.
I want to be paid more for what I do. I don’t want to have to fight so hard to fund my projects or build new ideas. I want to hire more people so I’m not carrying it all alone. I want to create businesses I’m proud of. That’s still my dream.
I’m also passionate about building a life that isn’t only defined by what I can produce. The freedom to work on my own terms now actually comes from embracing more rest, play, and only doing the work I really enjoy.
And I think that’s what most of us are seeking more than anything–lives that let our ambitions and our need to be soft coexist.
