Girlboss Series True Story

S ophia Amoruso wants to get something straight about the term “Girlboss”. “It’s about choosing for ourselves what success looks like, ” she explains. “I don’t want to equate it with the word feminism.”

Granted, it’s her phrase and, accordingly, should be hers to define. In 2014, Amoruso published #Girlboss, a self-help book-slash-memoir about the launch of her fashion brand Nasty Gal. Nasty Gal was an eBay store that became an e-commerce beast, selling clothes inspired by celebrities including the Olsen twins, Sienna Miller and Kate Moss, and pulling in revenues of almost $28m in 2011. The New York Times dubbed Amoruso a “Cinderella of tech”; she appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and was named one of its richest self-made women. Then, in November 2016, she filed for bankruptcy. “It was a very slow face plant, ” she says, drily.

Now the story has resurged via Netflix, which has fictionalised #Girlboss in a series of the same name (minus the hashtag). The first season covers the genesis of Nasty Gal. Its protagonist – based loosely on a 23-year old Amoruso – is unlikable and entitled: in the pilot, she gets sacked from her job in a shoe shop after eating her boss’s lunch. She is, predictably, a hot mess, and the opening scene has the usual visual and sonic tells of the bad girl: Suzi Quatro on the stereo, a car key with a disembodied Barbie head keyring. Naturally, fictional Amoruso is wearing a vest, jean shorts and knee-high boots. Watching things unfold, you get the feeling that this isn’t a protagonist whom the audience is supposed to side with entirely; by way of explanation (and perhaps defence) Britt Roberston, who plays her, has said that the character “can’t make her way in life because nobody understands her story or gets who she is”.

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Watching a fictionalised version of her life, Amoruso says, “was “crazy”. How did she feel about how she was characterised? “It portrays a 23-year-old, ” she says firmly. “There are things that are a lot like me at that age, and things that are exaggerated. It was never the task to recreate me.” She hopes the series will make people laugh, though presumably, for her, it is discomfiting viewing. “One part that really gets me is episode 13. We’ve just launched the website and we’re having the party. The camera pans in on my character and you see that she’s alone. That’s a feeling that I’ve experienced a lot. When you are the founder, you’re not everyone’s friend. You’re not a peer.”

The series has sparked a testy conversation around Amoruso, and how her stories (real and fictionalised) represent modern feminism. This puts her in quite a strange position, given that she says she is a feminist but that the book is

A feminist manual. It’s a curious distinction. #Girlboss has always been aligned – especially on social media – with go-getting, 1% feminism; her book has even been described, by the Washington Post, as a “Lean In for misfits”. “Girlboss is not a literal term, ” she insists. “It could mean being a stay-at-home-mom.”

Girlboss Sophia Amoruso Nasty Garbage Person Character

For Amoruso, being a girlboss often meant going it alone – she touches on the idea of separation several times. I wonder whether she could be alluding to the much-publicised rifts she had with her employees. In 2015, Nasty Gal was sued for allegedly firing four pregnant women and a man about to take paternity leave. However, when pressed on the subject , she remains quiet and never references the cases (which were settled out of court). Did she enjoy running her own company? “It all happened very quickly, ” she says. “I think it takes a lifetime to become a good leader. When you found a company accidentally, you don’t think ‘This is what our culture’s going to be, this is the kind of leader I’m going to be’”. Amoruso jokes that she herself is unemployable. “I’m not good at doing what I’m told.”

She’s introspective when she considers what she would have done differently. “There’s so much I didn’t do for the first several years at Nasty Gal, and today I know how important those things are, ” she says. What would she say to her younger self? “Focus. You have to space out your ambitions – don’t try to do them all at once.”When Sophia Amoruso was a dumpster-diving 22-year-old in Portland, the very last thing she probably expected was that, in less than 10 years, she’d become a millionaire CEO. Or that, in the year 2017, Netflix would be rolling out an original show about her life called

, set to drop on April 21, it’s wise to acquaint yourself with Amoruso’s legacy — both its triumphs and its controversies. While the fictional account starring Britt Robertson is pretty sensational, Amoruso’s life doesn’t need too much sprucing up to make entertaining. There are enough twists and turns to keep you hooked until the very last slide.

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It just goes to show that life is a long, winding, and unpredictable road. Think of Sophia Amoruso as a millennial Cinderella, weaving vintage rags into veritable riches before our very eyes.

If you’re interested, pick up her memoir and guide to life, #Girlboss, for a deep dive into the Nasty Gal founder’s thought processes.

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Bestseller written by Nasty Gal’s founder and former CEO Sophia Amoruso, but it’s as stylized and surreal as the six-inch platform boots and lamé jumpsuits Nasty Gal stocks.

Nasty Gal has been plagued with problems. First came the allegations that Amoruso had shifted her efforts from the fashion company she built to promoting her best-selling memoir (and herself); former employees began leaving scathing reviews on Glassdoor. Then, in September 2014, the layoffs (and lawsuits) started.

Amoruso stepped down as CEO of Nasty Gal in January 2015, funding for the company slowed, and even more employees were

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