NYC's Girlboss Rally was an interesting experiment...did it work?

When I stepped into Sophia Amoruso&#39;s&nbsp;Girlboss Rally, held at Industria Studios in NYC, the first thing I noticed was the branding. Having gotten there early enough to try the breakfast from partners Daily Harvest (you were given an option of a chia parfait or overnight oats,) and Joe &amp; The Juice (two flavors served in mini cups,) I watched from a couch in the back of the room while all the attendees trickled in. Each had paid $450 minimum ($700 if you sprang for VIP) to be there, so everyone&nbsp;came out wearing their finest, girlbossiest&nbsp;attire&mdash;which apparently constitutes, on average:&nbsp;heeled ankle boots, a ~$300 minibag, a blazer or a trenchcoat, and floral print on at least one item of clothing. The women, who ranged in age&nbsp;from roughly 23-30&nbsp;with outliers on both ends, grouped together along the white, family-style rows of high tables. They greeted each other and conversed over the flowers, excited for what the day was about to bring them. What they didn&#39;t seem to acknowledge, at least not yet, was their surroundings. In a room just off the dining hall, Bumble promoted their new offshoot Bumble Bizz by offering out free headshots (admittedly, I got one.) In the dining hall itself, next to the oats and juice, was food from their many culinary sponsors; you could pick up an RxBar, an Equator Coffee, a Flow Alkaline Spring Water, or a HealthAde Kombucha.

In the same room, you could walk up to mock iterations of Pinterest boards with names like &quot;Start Somewhere.&quot; At the boards, you could pull&nbsp;off real life &quot;pins,&quot; well-designed pieces of cardstock from&nbsp;which you could later scan a QR code and find the actual pin. All of the pins seemed to be geared towards the girlboss mentality: Total Body Travel Workouts giving way to An Indoor Plant Guide giving way to Spiked Winter Cranberry Lemonade. Interspersed between the Pinterest boards were tables with complimentary buttons and Pinterest-branded pens at which you could set an intention on a postcard that read &quot;Dear me, the next big what if I&#39;m gonna try next is _____ Sincerely, Me.&quot; A faux-mailbox covered in girlboss-isms like DO<s>UBT</s>&nbsp;and WHAT IF was even present for you to truly &quot;send&quot; the message to yourself. Across from the Pinterest station was a wall filled with doodles that was presumably made to be written on, although by the end of the day only a few people seemed to have, and most had just written&nbsp;their Instagram handles. So it goes.

IMG_5127.JPG

After breakfast, slowly people began to pick up their heels and put on their warm coats and shuttle over to Industria&#39;s second building, where the main hall, or as the rally called it the &quot;Balleroom,&quot; was located. It was time for Amoruso&#39;s opening remarks, and the real rally to begin. In her remarks, Amoruso surprised by acknowledging her own vulnerability, and the questions she now has to direct&nbsp;towards herself. She covered the rise of her clothing brand empire and its subsequent fall, the release of her book, and the fact she has now decided to start a media company, all while acknowledging how up in the air everything still is. &quot;I don&#39;t know what I&#39;m doing right now,&quot; she admitted to an audience of 600. It was surprising, I believe to everyone in the room; here is someone who is supposed to be telling us how to run our lives, admitting she&#39;s still figuring it out. But when Amoruso said &quot;I&#39;m in transition,&quot; it made even a skeptic like me see her as relatable. One of the most powerful things you can do is own up to&nbsp;your own shortcomings, and hearing that from&nbsp;girlboss&nbsp;#1 put forth an important message: it&#39;s okay to slip up sometimes.

She was followed by Keynote speaker Gabby Bernstein, motivational speaker, #1 New York Times best-selling self-help book author, and self-professed former drug addict, who shared with us her five keys to success:&nbsp;

#1. Success is an inside job.

#2. Set intention.

#3. Speed up by slowing down.

#4. You don&#39;t have to be there now.

#5. &quot;Fuck it, let&#39;s go.&quot;

Bernstein was so good at her job and engaging the audience&nbsp;I eventually found myself taking notes on things she was saying for myself as opposed to this story. She welcomed everyone into an &quot;explosion of pink and high-fives&quot; with open arms, and was a fantastic start to a day of panels.

But that brings me to my first true gripe: outside of the panels and the Chromebook-sponsored Startup Studio for which you had to sign up long in advance, there was nothing to do. Like...nothing. The people who paid $700 for VIP got a luxe lounge, but if you were a general admission ticket holder who didn&#39;t feel like going to one of the panels, there wasn&#39;t really anywhere to sit, and there certainly wasn&#39;t anything to do. Dig Inn provided lunch, which was a nice treat. However, whenever&nbsp;I went back to the cafeteria hoping to find somewhere (anywhere) to sit and collect my thoughts, they were prepping for a new set of refreshments, making me feel like an intruder. It was this situation that made me feel for girls like the one I met in the Bumble Bizz line, who had flown in from Tampa. For $450, higher than the cost of most major music festivals, there was seemingly not much to do. Just one main act.&nbsp;

Perhaps I feel this way because I didn&#39;t feel particularly represented at the rally as a whole. Although I am for all intents and purposes a woman, and for all intents and purposes a &quot;girlboss,&quot; the beautifully designed&nbsp;millennial pink love-fest didn&#39;t feel like it was intended for me. Despite how inclusive the&nbsp;space was&nbsp;in theory, when I took a brief trip&nbsp;home during a panel I wasn&#39;t interested in&nbsp;to drop something off, I also made a point to change my clothes into something that would help me blend in more. I can&#39;t claim to understand why the Girlboss Rally attracts a kind of uniformity, but speculation tells me it may have something to do with the price tag or the branding. And even with the change of clothes, despite the fact I thoroughly enjoyed some of the panels (Esther Perel was a treat,) after mingling at the cocktail party, I was left feeling like I was sitting at the cool kids&#39; table, but not at all a cool kid.&nbsp;

In my eyes, the Girlboss Rally can&#39;t be quantified as a success or a failure. Amoruso is still clearly building a business and brand, and as she said, she&#39;s in transition. I have no doubt that next year&#39;s rally will provide attendees&nbsp;with more to do. But in order to attract&nbsp;all&nbsp;girlbosses, it may have to shift its point of view.

The Complicated Matter of Being a Girlboss

Tags

Recommended posts for you

Fashion

Inside Silvia Tcherassi's New Bal Harbour Boutique

L'Officiel Art

That Viral Duct-Taped Banana Just Sold for $6.2 Million

Pop culture

Inside Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan’s Relationship: Timeline of Key Moments

Fashion

Steph Curry on His Style and NBA Tunnel Walk Philosophy

Fashion

Discover Fashion Inspired by Lanzarote, the Canary Island Gem

Film & TV

Madelyn Cline Navigates Fame

Politics & Culture

The Shocking Tale of a NoHo Nightmare Tenant Who Scammed Across the Globe

Fashion

The Top Resort 2025 Trends, From Fringe to Animal Prints