Have you ever heard the phrase “career girl?” It’s an older term previously used to refer to a woman, typically a young woman, who decided to pursue a career in their twenties instead of getting married and starting a family. The phrase career girl was most often used in the period between the 1920’s and 1950’s, before the women’s rights movement came about and women started earning more equal pay and civil rights. During the time period in which the phrase was used, it typically held a negative connotation and served the primary purpose of shaming or separating the women which it was applied to from the socially accepted norm. Though most might think today’s society is a much different one, in which the idea of the working woman is a much more widely accepted idea and reality, this is unfortunately not the case. In spite of progress in the area of women’s rights and the relative normality of women within higher education and the workforce, there continues to be a stigma around the modern day “career girl” in the United States.

For many years after its widespread inception in the 60’s and 70’s, the term "feminism" also held a relatively negative connotation in the eyes of the government and of high society. Feminism fought a long and difficult battle to become more normalized, which it had more or less achieved by the late 1980’s and 1990’s. By the 2000’s, pop culture saw feminism becoming a type of fad. Now it was the “in thing” to be a feminist who slapped guys you thought might be looking at your ass a little too long and who went to prom stag with a bunch of female friends. It was at this point that “girl power” and empowering female institutions really came about.

However, as we moved into the second decade of the 21st century, attitudes toward feminism once again began to shift in normalized society. It was at this point that we began to see what some call “an overload of feminism.” Stories and memes started erupting about women who committed hate crimes against men, falsely claimed rape or sexual abuse, and began very inappropriately using the mental health term “triggered” to describe any time they were minutely offended. (The term triggered, by the way, is a legitimate medical term used to describe episodes of patients who have PTSD, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and various eating disorders, but that's a whole other article.)

Starting around 2010-2012, feminism became the punch line to a wide range of jokes created in and spread throughout pop culture. Scrolling on various social media sites, it's hard to escape stories posted with a title such as, “It’s people like this who give feminism a bad name.” I will admit, I do occasionally come across a story on social media about some “wild feminist” who went on a massive rant about some guy who violated her because he didn’t get her permission to pull her out of the water to save her from drowning— and I, too, shake my head. But why does this matter? What does feminism becoming one giant meme in modern society have to do with the stigma behind career girls?

Put simply, everything.

With thousands of stories every day that all end with the same, “Well this is why feminism is dead,” conclusion— where does that leave female rights and equality? Being a heavy consumer of media myself, namely social media and streaming sites such as Netflix and Hulu, it’s my experience and opinion that this dismissal of so-called “new age feminism” has led-- and continues to lead-- to a stigma around strong women.

One of the largest and most prevalent examples of this is something I like to call “the bitch factor.” This is the phenomenon in American pop culture that has a tendency to shame powerful and commanding women as "bitches" instead of recognizing them as strong leaders, as they would be labeled if they were men. This particular phenomena has been widely discussed in the past couple of years and many women have actively tried to break the stereotype. However, breaking this stereotype can sometimes lead to successful women conceding to other stereotypes of women that are more forgiving than “the bitch factor.”

Here are a few examples.

My first and probably greatest example is The Mindy Project, a Hulu original starring comedian Mindy Kahling. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore this show overall, in spite of its many cringe-worthy moments. What I don’t love about it is that Mindy, known in the show as Dr. Mindy Lahiri OB/GYN, is a successful woman who is constantly talking about her success while also constantly giving into her own insecurities and feeding stereotypes of women of color in the workforce. She loves drama, doesn’t handle stress or change well, sleeps with a TON of guys while still claiming she’s looking for her prince charming, and repeatedly emphasizes the ditsy nature of her personality. While it is extremely entertaining, and I think somewhat relatable, every time I put it on in the presence of my fiancé he rolls his eyes and complains about the “girly” and “over-dramatic” nature of the show. The Mindy Project, though it will continue to be my guilty pleasure, is overall reminiscent of 1950’s soap operas that were highly condemned for lacking actual cinematic and narrative value.

While looking through reviews of institutions like universities or major companies, something you can rely on seeing is the statistics of the percentage of women and people of color included in each. Initially this seems like a useful tool to determine how inclusive an institution is and should actually show the progress of equality within society. But do you want to know what I see when I come across these statistics in a pamphlet that I’m supposed to identify with? My first thought is always, “Why is female and ethnic participation in something like a public university now considered a wow factor?” Rather than demonstrating equality and empowerment, to me these statistics are a marketing tool that actually further separates women and minorities from the norm. The fact that minority participation has to be broadcasted rather than accepted as an inherent truth only proves that it hasn’t been accepted yet, that it's still something odd that breaks the barrier of the normal for a woman to be a part of an accredited university or company.

On the matter of feminism and female equality within society, I will say that there has been much social and political progress since the inception of the phrase “career girl.” Unfortunately, much like racism, misogyny and oppression have not disappeared but rather have taken a new form. Similar to color-blindness on the topic of modern racism, the idea that there are these modern feminists who "ruin" the ideas that shaped feminism from the beginning has turned feminism into a type of punch line that has lead to the acceptance of a new round of stereotypes for working women.