Barack Obama is such a boy boss.
Prince Harry? What a brave dadpreneur.
Let’s do an experiment:
I want you to refer to your male colleagues, managers, and the entrepreneur men you know —hell, any man with a job—as “boy bosses” for the next week and see how it goes.
OMG. SOMEONE GIVE ME AN INTERNET REALITY SHOW WHERE I INTERVIEW MEN AND CONGRATULATE THEM ON BEING BOY BOSSES WITH A STRAIGHT FACE.
Seriously though, should this be a spin off of my show?
I just stopped writing this post to spend 5 minutes pondering whether I should release a #BOYBOSS line of merchandise.
This is what my friends with shiny object syndrome refer to as “squirrel,” no?
But I love to imagine a universe where men are patted on the head and cheered (in a singsong voice) for being “boy bosses.”
Thank God I have a basement full of wigs and a wild imagination because I created that universe for all of us to enjoy in this episode of Awkward Marketing.
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I sent this video to my dad yesterday and he didn’t get it.
He’s been living blissfully in a universe where he didn’t know that the term “girl boss” existed.
But he DID have a very strong reaction to what he THOUGHT was me actually suggesting we start calling any man with a job a “boy boss.”
This is when I started fantasizing about getting him a Boy Boss shirt for Father’s Day. Or Boss Daddy.
EVEN BETTER! Now I just want to start gifting EVERY man in my life with Boy Boss accessories – glittery cell phone cases, sassy coffee mugs, t-shirts with boy boss lettered in this script font (that every new #boyboss must also use in his inspirational Insta posts).
With my reality film crew in tow to get all the reactions, of course.
But my dad’s strong reaction to the IDEA of being called a “boy boss” inadvertently proved my point.
We’d never put Barack Obama on a list of Top 10 Boy Bosses.
But I found oodles of articles EASILY when I searched “Michelle Obama girl boss” on Google.
- 12 Times Michelle Obama Proved She Was The Ultimate GirlBoss
- Why Michelle Obama Is The True Definition of a Girl Boss
- 5 Must-Read Girl Boss Books
When a man leads, he’s a boss.
When a woman leads, she’s a girl boss.
And even though the phrase “girl boss” belittles our accomplishments, it’s WOMEN who have embraced this phrase and its accompanying hashtag swag.
I’m not above it.
Raise your hand if you’re a woman in business and at least one family member has gifted you swag sporting these words.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever used the term yourself — and kinda liked it.
My hand is up. I got the t-shirt. I’ve used the hashtag. I’ve looked in the mirror before a meeting, buttoned my blazer, and thought, “You got this, girl boss.”
But, after that initial pang of “girl power,” this candy coated, millennial pink-tinted phrase always left a bitter taste in my mouth. Why??? And why are there no boy bosses?
In this boss edition of Awkward Marketing, I put my own internalized gender stereotypes on blast and break down the problem with girl bosses.
(And why even Rachel Hollis agrees with me.)
I’m firing my inner girl boss and promoting myself to boss.
Referenced in this video:
