Netflix memorializes 2005-era internet culture in Girlboss
Netflix’s new series Girlboss is loosely based (“real loosely,” the title card reminds us at the start of each episode) on the life of Sophia Amoruso, the founder and former CEO of the women’s clothing retailer Nasty Gal. The 13-episode series is a fine way to kill seven hours, and it would be accurate to call it a coming-of-age story, or a story of female friendship among 20-somethings. Except Girlboss at least vaguely claims to be a story about starting a business. And the reason it got made is the same reason that the show suffers: this is nominally a true story.
Girlboss is the most recent in a line of TV shows and movies that promise to tell the story of a now-successful Silicon Valley darling (or, in…