On being a girlboss
I have been filling official documents and forms since my age was in single digits. I remember nervously telling my dad on a dimly lit flight to India that the form wanted the resident address in India, not Singapore, because of where the question was, as a seven-year-old. “See properly, otherwise I have to get a new form and rewrite everything,” was what my dad said irritably in response. I pointed out the differences in the way the term “address” had been used – I was right, so my dad asked the flight stewardess for a fresh copy of the form, with no further acknowledgement towards me. I turned my head the other way and stared out the aeroplane window as tears ran unabashedly down my face at my dad’s sharp tone. I told myself, it’s okay, I’ll be at my grandparents’ soon, where I will be cherished for who I am, not what I can do.
The next flight, my dad asked me to fill out the forms with him. By age 11, I had memorised everyone’s passport numbers and identification card numbers. My dad was now impressed that I could fill forms from memory. My family started going off what I was saying simply because I understood English better. I was a GIRL boss before girl boss was even a thing.
I wasn’t that good a student academically in primary school – “Thendral doesn’t understand the seriousness of streaming” or “Thendral is still playful”. I scraped by, but I wasn’t “living up to my potential”. Irony being, I was still girlbossing – I had three CCAs (Brownies, Indian dance, Angklung ensemble) and I competed in oratorical competitions every year, went to the library and read so many books I got a badge for it, went for Sangeetham (Indian classical singing) classes, English tuition, and later, Bharathanatyam (Indian classical dance) classes as well.
I girlbossed so hard even in my 20s, that I was raring to GO. I held a full-time job (one that involved a lot of interactions with vulnerable groups), was actively job seeking, worked out 5 times a week, was throwing ideas for my book against a wall to see what sticks – I went to a French school at some point to learn French, all while meal prepping breakfast, lunch and snacks for work and having an active social life. I thought I was killing it. I mean, that’s what the whole “woman can have it all” is about, right? You just need to plan, prioritise and be productive!! Never mind that your third coffee is giving you the jitters and your heartbeat feels frantic.
At a cross-team meeting at my first job, I picked up on a detail from a colleague on a different team, which made a peer exclaim, “How on EARTH did you notice that?” and my boss answer, “Ya, Thendral is very observant – you have to be careful around her.” I thought I was such a girlboss and was so smug before I realised it was more likely that I had repackaged my hypervigilance and sensitivity to circumstances as a childhood affinity for Sherlock Holmes and efforts to emulate him (half-truth).
Then I turned thirty.
I had two back-to-back best friend breakups over COVID-19. Friendships that had lasted so long, you couldn’t remember a major event they weren’t present for. Five years of trying to date/be on the arranged marriage scene was now edging towards ten. I had a hospitalisation and a health episode, which showed me how much I had neglected my health: I have a fast turnaround at work, but it took me three years to finally see a doctor about a persistent pain. “My dear, you should get the iron infusion TODAY. I mean, take your time, think about it, I’ll keep my clinic open, but you really, really need it. You can come by after you are done with the scope. I can use the same plug, I will keep my clinic open for you. But take your time to think about it.” was how my doctor pushed for my health. We still joke that she would have strapped me to the bed if patient consent wasn’t a concept, but I was appalled with myself that a third person was advocating for my health more than I was.
And now that I’m medically healthy, and circling 35, I’m starting to realise I don’t want to girl boss anymore – or be associated with that term.
It’s not that I’m no longer driven, or have goals, or things to achieve (well, maybe, to a certain extent), but it’s just that I don’t want to go above and beyond. I don’t want to overcompensate to prove myself to anyone. I don’t want to do something for the sake of anyone’s praise anymore.
Because what girlbossing has resulted in is me being the maternal figure in friendships, me coming across as the one who has it altogether, and the one who CAN figure it out even if she doesn’t.
“How did you think of that?!”
Ermmm, how did you not?
“How do you just KNOW these things?!?”
Did you not have to?
“FUCK, you’re so smart, I want to be you when I grow up!!!”
You’re literally older than me?
Zero margin for error growing up has made me the person who can handle it because I was in situations where I had next to no alternative options. It was literally: fill the forms correctly or be detained. And so, compliments came across as an overreaction for something trivial, something to be brushed off because I never had room for incompetence or ignorance.
It had become so easy for people to say, “Oh, Thendral can handle it!” among my friend groups, at work, at home, that no one paused to ask, “Should Thendral handle it?”, or “Does Thendral actually WANT to handle it?” for that matter.
I was called a girl boss by a guy of a similar age in a social setting recently – a term I find infantilising for the record because no one calls a grown man a boy boss. Yet, a 34-year-old woman who’s more than capable, responsible and adept is still just a girl.
He wanted to know how I “occupy” my time (God forbid an unmarried woman has hobbies and interests and a FULL life) and said, “Wow, your interests are so varied. And you work full-time?” Yes? “Wow, you’re such a girl boss.”
For being a functioning, self-regulated woman interested in life.
I’ve been jokingly telling my friends I don’t want to girl boss anymore of late. But I mean it with my whole heart. I follow it with, “I just want to girl rest, girl play, and girl lie down”, and I mean that too with my whole heart.
Because I want to claim the girlhood I didn’t really have – one where I’m lying on my back in my grandparents’ home as night falls after a cold, unrelenting rain. The petrichor poignant, the chill comforting, and fireflies coming alive on windowsills as I try to trace the shape of the moon with my fingers. Some days that’s the entirety of what I want to do. Let my inner girl free, uninhibited, unbothered, filled with innocence, wonder, and peace.
But you can’t go back in time to a place that no longer exists, and there’s a form I need to fill and submit by Monday.
Disclaimer
I want to be very clear: this is my personal experience. I’m not invalidating anyone else’s and I’m well aware of how the term “girl boss” can be empowering for some. I just want to share the connotations and the nuances of this word I’ve recently found to become exhausting.
