KUNAWAY RLBOSS

She coined the term that inspired a generation of women entrepreneurs—and then sunk them. Ten years later, Sophia Amoruso is ready to cast off the label for good.

- JESSICA BENNETT

Sophia Amoruso was up onstage fiddling with her blouse, trying to remember why she'd agreed to do this event in the first place. It was the opening night of a two-day summit hosted by the tech outlet The Information, where top women in technology, media, and finance had gathered at a luxury Napa Valley resort last October. The "highly impactful gathering" for "elite and deeply engaged" women promised attendees "actionable tactics," and Amoruso was there to cap off the evening.

Inspiration is the currency of the conference industry, and Amoruso, with her rags-to-riches story and her cool-but-relatable aesthetic, for a long time incited it without trying. She was the millennial patron saint for unconventional ambition, first as founder and CEO of the onetime mega fashion brand Nasty Gal, and then with her blockbuster business book #Girlboss, which told the story of how she got there. But it had been a while.

Amoruso was low energy. She'd had a long day of travel, and had been up early for a call with one of her founders-her job these days is as the head of an early-stage venture capital fund. She had also, to be perfectly honest, grown a bit allergic to this kind of forced empowerment. She was feeling a bit...sardonic.

"I don't use the word. I don't really identify with it," she said flatly when moderator Jessica Lessin, the CEO and founder of The Information, asked her how she views girlboss, a term she popularized when her book came out almost 10 years ago. The word had been formally added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary just a few months prior.

"I mean, we've seen a bloodbath," she said later when asked for her opinion on how women founders have been treated in the press.