#Girlboss Feminism and Emotional Labour in Leigh Stein’s Self Care

Abstract

Abstract: Leigh Stein’s Self Care: A Novel is a satire of the world of the ‘wellness influencer’ that targets a breed of corporate white feminism pejoratively known as ‘girlboss feminism’. Self Care exposes how digital spaces of girlboss culture mix entrepreneurship and social justice by making the visibility of gender and race an end in itself rather than the means to social change. I argue that this process entails a multi-dimensional affective and emotional labour that resonates with and extends Arlie Russell Hochschild’s influential work in a new digital context. The essay explores how such new forms of digital emotional labour become entangled with the contradictions of self-care, a concept that has radical origins but is co-opted by neoliberal feminism. It also examines the function of Stein’s only Black character in the novel, drawing attention to newly emergent racialised forms of embodied and emotional labour found in female-founded companies that strive for the appearance of diversity. Based on extensive research into real-life start-ups and girlboss work culture, Self Care raises broader questions about how fiction, and especially satire, through its unique combination of critique and entertainment, can expand on and popularise scholarship that addresses the vexed relationship between emotion and work.

Keywords:

• Leigh Stein
• digital spaces and girlboss feminism
• wellness influencer
• self-care and race
• emotional labour and satire

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The #MeToo scandal that informs the second half of the novel and that implicates one of Richual’s male investors also involves emotional labour largely undertaken by the company’s female employees.

2 For this alternative notion of emotional labour that is based on Lorde’s work and its applications in the context of social welfare, see Gunaratnam and Lewis (2001).

3 On disability, self-care and care work see Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) and Kim and Schalk (2021).

4 Alongside the Wing and Nasty Gal, these include underwear brand Thinx whose CEO was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace, and the luggage brand Away that created a culture of overwork and surveillance (Stein 2020b).

5 Though used in a different context, I draw here on research on the ‘dark side’ of emotional labour (Ward and McMurray 2016).

6 Stein has spoken about her personal experience in many interviews and podcasts. See Stein 2020b for a summary.