Girl boss comes a cross as an arrogant narcissistic misandris.   Give us back, Ripley, sarah conner.

These girlboss characters are actually terrible role models.
Teaching Girls they are already perfect in their state of narcissism and hubris and if you question that, your somehow a misogynist.

I'm a woman and I hate this archetype. It's not that they're strong or skilled it's that the author is afraid to give them real struggles, flaws, or failures. All things that strong male characters are given. They're so afraid of being seen as offensive or sexist against women that they don't write women as human beings.

To me, Ripley will always be the quintessential heroine of all time. When Alien first came out, the entire audience was awestruck by its realism and unrelenting terror. And when Dallas fell victim, nobody blinked an eye as Ripley then personified the audience’s courage and will for survival. She defeated the monster and was a woman.

The moral framework is completely inverted for a girlboss. The writers think she is perfect and moral, therefore she can do no wrong. Therefore when she does things like overreact, disparage people, act snippy, use unreasonable force, casually and effortlessly murder, or enslave entire towns, it's never her fault, is usually praised, or at least explained away as the blameless result of a male villain or an anonymous social construct. She is also dull, or irritating. There are no stakes, she cannot be harmed, and because she is always right there is no tension of self-reflection, changing her mind or tactics, because ... why would you?
A perfect character making no mistakes and always being assured and committed to her path is not good viewing. She also has no scope for a special flash of insight or emotional resonance because her perfection is always already present. She cannot rise above her own perfection.
The studios won't change because they too are caught in the quicksand of their own perfection. The writing is obviously great, so it must be the CGI, the marketing, the release date, the social media squabbles and so on. Maybe ya just can't write?

Aside from the blatant feminist messaging.... girlboss characters also make for terrible storytelling and more often than not come across as cringey.  Unfortunately now the well is poisoned and companies like Disney are now radioactive to audiences.

Not to throw shade on Cavil's Man of Steel, but that's what Affleck's Batman meant when he said, "Men are brave" - meaning humans are brave bc they do the heroic thing despite weaknesses, flaws, fears and mortality. Here he meant humans, not just men, in comparison to Kal El.

A female who is vulnerable and makes mistakes is a character everyone can relate to in life.

I do wanna defend the girl from The Thunderbolts tho, while her character had some girl boss traits, she was shown to care about the men in her life like her adoptive father, and she immediately became protective of a man she just met without immediately belittling him, just understanding he needed help. It didn't feel like she wanted to be above men, or felt moral superiority over the, and was willing to show emotional weakness in their presence.

The biggest tragedy of feminism is how it has devalued those things that truly DO set females apart from males.  Things that society needs.  Instead it has simply become “you have to dominate men in their own arena”.  Be the better man… and not actually a woman.  I sometimes feel I’m the only one who sees that feminism is actually “masculism”, as it’s masculine traits that are valued above all else.  It went from “you can choose not to adhere to traditional feminine roles” to “you absolutely should never adhere to traditional feminine roles”.  

And we’re in a situation now where movies and shows portray women as better than men in every way… even in a physical sense.  The girl boss is a fantasy trip played out in non-fantasy settings.  

It’s even skewed peoples assessments of actual real-world qualities in males and females.  (Just ignore that body cam footage showing 4 female police officers failing to subdue 1 average sized male… or that female firefighter who cannot carry people from a burning building…)

The worst part is that a lot of these girl bosses degrade and humiliate men. Modern feminism is disguised as misandry.

How to write a girl boss:
1. Find a memorable quote from famous villains:  e.g., Voldemort, Palpatine, Hannibal Lecter
2. Have your female character say those lines
3. Let supporting characters excuse the girl boss by saying the world misunderstands her and praise her innate wisdom.

My favorite girl-boss was Vice-Admiral Holdo. Like you said, she gave out orders like a queen to her subjects. Somehow, the theme of a Star Wars movie was that the Rebellion should blindly follow orders without question, just like Stormtroopers.

5:21 I graduated from University in 2017, I graduated HS in 2012, and I say all that to illustrate that the girl boss archetypes were around in the 2010s it only got worse because at first they were covert, but when almost every female character became a girl boss that's when the fatigue set in.

The character of mary sue was created in the 1970s in a story called a trekkers tale.   She was created as a parody of this kind of character, not a template for them

As a guy I love badass women like Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, Black Widow, Wonder Woman and Alita. What separates them from girl bosses is that they’re human with complexities, struggles and imperfections. To me girl bosses are actually demeaning to women because it ironically treats them like objects simply to be used to further political agendas, not actual people. I do really hope the trend dies soon.

Worse part is I’m not sure where this distasteful idea of a girl-boss came from. If you went back 10-15 years, you could find so many shows/movies with amazing female characters, any of whom could be a valid girl-boss. Some/most of them didn’t even need to fight, they had intellect, charm, style to get the job done, and if they could fight even better. Nowadays, idea is no personality or depth… and can fight, I guess. Boring! Bring back the ladies with some moxie, identity, friends, struggles, dreams!

Remember Black Widow waaaay back when the MCU was good. That was a girl-boss! Natasha was sexy, funny, caring, smart, fearless AND could fight.

This isn’t rocket science, Hollywood!!

Huntr/x, the demon hunters group, should be the needed breaking point about how to build relatable heroines in movies.

Feminizing most male oriented genres and IPs was also the downfall of Hollywood. It was so important to them to get women and girls into these things. They got blinded by it and went all in.

What stands out to me about the ‘girl boss’ trope is that, once you strip it down, the supposed hero is often morally bankrupt — essentially the villain. Riri Williams is a clear example.
Rumi from Kpop Demon Hunters !!!! Jinx and Vi from Arcane !!!! That's how you write a complex, charismatic female lead.