"The Girlbossification of AI/Reese Witherspoon, Mel Robbins, and Sheryl Sandberg are telling women to use ChatGPT or get left behind."

That's a headline at The Cut.

I haven't read the article (yet). I just went to AI, asked it to read the article for me, and added the prompt: "I thought 'girlboss' was a dying framework." Grok agreed with me about "girlboss."

You're spot on— "girlboss" has been widely declared dead (or at least on life support) for years. By the mid-2020s, the term had become a punchline for toxic hustle culture, burnout aesthetics, exclusionary corporate feminism, and the "rise and grind" era that promised women could "have it all" if they just leaned in harder. Cultural commentary shifted toward "soft life," "snail girl" vibes, quiet quitting, slow living, and backlash against the idea that ambition equals endless optimization under capitalism. The May 11, 2026, The Cut article you linked ("The Girlbossification of AI") essentially argues that this supposedly dying framework isn't gone—it's just been updated for the AI era. Author frames it as a revival (or mutation) where high-profile women like Reese Witherspoon, Mel Robbins, and Sheryl Sandberg are repackaging AI tools (ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, etc.) as the new essential for women's career survival and empowerment. It's no longer purely aspirational "have it all" optimism; it's more defensive: don't get left behind, don't backslide, automate the drudgery so you can cling to what you've got.

You're spot on— "girlboss" has been widely declared dead (or at least on life support) for years. By the mid-2020s, the term had become a punchline for toxic hustle culture, burnout aesthetics, exclusionary corporate feminism, and the "rise and grind" era that promised women could "have it all" if they just leaned in harder. Cultural commentary shifted toward "soft life," "snail girl" vibes, quiet quitting, slow living, and backlash against the idea that ambition equals endless optimization under capitalism. The May 11, 2026, The Cut article you linked ("The Girlbossification of AI") essentially argues that this supposedly dying framework isn't gone—it's just been updated for the AI era. Author frames it as a revival (or mutation) where high-profile women like Reese Witherspoon, Mel Robbins, and Sheryl Sandberg are repackaging AI tools (ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, etc.) as the new essential for women's career survival and empowerment. It's no longer purely aspirational "have it all" optimism; it's more defensive: don't get left behind, don't backslide, automate the drudgery so you can cling to what you've got.

But — I'm reading the article now —  The Cut isn't promoting "girlbossification." It's sick of these girlboss celebs:

To what extent does Trump's new official portrait look like his mugshot?

 Surely, the resemblance is intentional... but so are the differences:

The similarities include the framing of the picture. Notice how the side of the collar and lapel line up under the ear (the famous ear!) and how much of the top of the head is showing, with the chin down. There's a lack of symmetry in the eyes, and a distinctive arced wrinkle over his left eye.

But the mugshot face has garish color and harsh light and shade and a deep frown line on the left side of the mouth. The official portrait lighting puts the shadow where it is flattering and where it reveals the individuality and humanity of the face. By comparison, mugshot Trump seems cartoonish. It's almost as if the light were adjusted to create the look of a Hitler mustache. 

In both pictures Trump's right eye seems more active. It's more narrowly pinched than his left eye. It's the eye that's looking right into you. The portrait eye is gentler, wiser, and it influences my interpretation of the mugshot eye. Mugshot Trump is angry. And, oh!, those mugshot eyebrows. They overhang the eyes ominously. He's saying he will fight, fight, fight. Portrait Trump is more complex.

What do you see in him? Whatever it is, it includes his intent to make you think about the mugshot and all that it represents. His adversaries threw everything they could at him, and he fought back and triumphed. But he's not smiling. He's not the Trump in the 2017 portrait:

But who is he? Who is he, now that he's Trump 47?

"The judge actually threatened to strike all of Costello’s testimony if he raised his eyebrows again."

"That of course would have been unconstitutional because it would have denied the defendant his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses and to raise a defense. It would have punished the defendant for something a witness was accused of doing. Even if what Costello did was wrong, and it was not, it would be utterly improper and unlawful to strike his testimony — testimony that undercut and contradicted the government’s star witness.... Moreover, [Justice Merchan's] affect while issuing that unconstitutional threat revealed his utter contempt for the defense and anyone who testified for the defendant. The public should have been able to see the judge in action, but because the case is not being televised, the public has to rely on the biased reporting of partisan journalists. But the public was even denied the opportunity to hear from journalists who saw the judge in action because he cleared the courtroom. I am one of the few witnesses...."

Writes Alan Dershowitz, in "I was inside the court when the judge closed the Trump trial, and what I saw shocked me" (NY Post).

ADDED: Byron York has "The Trump trial suffers a nervous breakdown":

Having Costello testify was a last-minute decision by the Trump defense. He had knowledge of Cohen’s credibility, having been Cohen’s lawyer.... Costello testified that Cohen told him that Trump did not know about the nondisclosure agreement payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. “Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about those payments, that he did this on his own, and he repeated that numerous times,” Costello said....

That is important information, given that it goes to the heart of the case — that Trump allegedly, with intent to defraud, falsified records of the payments because he was also intending to commit some other crime that prosecutors have not yet specified. If Trump “knew nothing about those payments,” as Cohen said, according to Costello’s testimony, that would throw a big wrench in the prosecution’s theory of what happened.

Perhaps you have not heard about Costello’s testimony. If not, that was likely because everyone, including the press, got very excited about what happened later....

Go to the link for quotes from the transcript covering the material Dershowitz wrote about as an eyewitness.

"I don’t trash-pick as often as I’d like to — usually when I’m faced with doing something far more unappealing..."

"... or whenever I need to work off some bad karma. It’s a terrific hobby for me, an anxious putterer with a holier-than-thou bent who writes better when my hands are occupied with something else. (I’m not alone — the humorist David Sedaris is a much more accomplished writer and trash picker than me.) When I do it, though, Bluetooth headphones in my ears and a weed gummy dissolving in my stomach, solicitousness and gratification ripple through me."

Writes Jazmine Hughes, in "The Joy of Picking Up Other People’s Trash/When my neighborhood changed around me, I decided to change it" (NYT).

The neighborhood is not named, but we're told it's in Brooklyn, and the change is gentrification — "turbocharged gentrification." Hughes looks around and sees herself as "the only Black person standing on the corner" while "gaggles of 20-somethings... roam the streets, presumably in search of eyebrows, which none of them seemed to have."

"Not only were women inside-out men, but in the medieval theory of bodily 'humors,' men were sanguine, rational, hot and dry..."

"... while women were phlegmatic, lascivious, cold and moist. Eager to be warmed up by sexual contact, they were forever trying to lure the poor rational male into fornication (the current idea that women have a lower sex drive than men would have been news to Aquinas). Viewing the female body through a medieval lens instantly exposes how transitory, not to say absurd, all such androcentric ideas are. While modern western culture is fixated on large breasts and tiny waists, in the Middle Ages... the ideal woman had small breasts and a pot belly.... For a long time, bushy eyebrows were in... but then went out of fashion thanks to the French scholar Matthew of Vendôme... [who] raved about... red cheeks and the 'white and clear' space between her eyebrows where 'the separated arches do not allow the hairs to run rampant.' Soon, everyone had ditched the monobrow in favor of rouging and plucking."

From "'The Once and Future Sex’ Review: Daughters of Eve/To male theologians of the Middle Ages, the female body was a mystery—and makeup was false advertising" (Wall Street Journal).

"'It’s a timeless bridal look,' says hairstylist Xavier Velasquez—who met Biden through her longtime brow artist Azi Sacks—of the sculptural bun look he crafted. "

That's just 2 of "All the Details Behind Naomi Biden’s Timeless Wedding Day Beauty" (Vogue).

Imagine having a "longtime brow artist." Imagine "crafting" a "sculptural bun look." It's not just a bun. It's a crafted sculptural bun look.

In Vogue. Which also has "Exclusive: Naomi Biden on Her White House Wedding."

 

I would not have posed Jill like that. Too evocative of Joe Biden's hair-inhalation propensities. But I mainly wanted you to see what longtime brow artistry and sculptural bun look craftsmanship can do. And I wanted to set up the laugh you'll get when you read what White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: 

"The wedding of Naomi Biden and Peter is a private family event. Naomi and Peter have asked that their wedding be a closed to the media and we are respecting their wishes. This is something that the couple has decided."

Here are 7 TikToks for you this evening. Some people love them!

1. Overused phrases in books.

2. The Roadblock of Justice.

3. Maybe pursue a smaller dream.

4. The top 3 tones for voice-over actors.

5. When Rosie O'Donnell visited Martha Stewart in prison.

6. Maybe when the lady seems insecure, it's not what you think.

7. It's the same old song, but with a different melody (and I'm accepting these men in shorts).

"You don’t like that kind of beauty?"/"Good grief, what’s likeable in such snakiness?... In our true Russian understanding concerning a woman’s build..."

"... we keep to a type of our own, which we find much more suitable than modern-day frivolity. We don’t appreciate spindliness, true; we prefer that a woman stand not on long legs, but on sturdy ones, so that she doesn’t get tangled up, but rolls about everywhere like a ball and makes it, where a spindly-legged one will run and trip. We also don’t appreciate snaky thinness, but require that a woman be on the stout side, ample, because, though it’s not so elegant, it points to maternity in them. The brow of our real, pure Russian woman’s breed is more plump, more meaty, but then in that soft brow there’s more gaiety, more welcome. The same for the nose: ours have noses that aren’t hooked, but more like little pips, but this little pip itself, like it or not, is much more affable in family life than a dry, proud nose. But the eyebrows especially, the eyebrows open up the look of the face, and therefore it’s necessary that a woman’s eyebrows not scowl, but be opened out, archlike, for a man finds it more inviting to talk with such a woman, and she makes a different, more welcoming impression on everybody coming to the house. But modern taste, naturally, has abandoned this good type and approves of airy ephemerality in the female sex, only that’s completely useless.”

From "The Sealed Angel," an 1873 story by Nikolai Leskov, collected in "The Enchanted Wanderer." That's a character speaking, not the author's attitude.

That passage amused me, as I was listening to the audiobook and hiking in the mud in the Arb today. The story isn't much about women though, but about the Old Believers and their icons. Yesterday, I read the first story in the collection, "The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."

My reading these stories has nothing to do with the woes unleashed by Russia in the world today. It is a consequence of reading Larry McMurtry's book "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond" (which I mentioned a few days ago, here). That book begins: 

"I'm a girl and I don't understand why other girls are obsessed with eyebrows. Can someone please explain."

"It’s not only a girl thing! Many people like to groom and apply makeup to their brows because it can change your whole face! Beautiful brows have the power to intensify your look and to kinda “put together” your facial features :)"/"They do a ton to shape someone's face. Just google 'celebrities without eyebrows' and see what a difference they make..." 

From a discussion in the Bad Makeup Artists subreddit. 

And I know my audience well enough to put this up so you don't feel you need to find it for me: 

 

 Secondary "Seinfeld" eyebrows clip: 

"Eyebrows? Who cares? With all the suffering around us, with all of the important things to focus on, it flummoxes me to witness how people waste time and money."

That's the third-highest-ranked comment on a weirdly long WaPo article titled "Our pandemic eyebrows are driving us crazy. Can we learn to love them?" 

All the high-rated comments say just about exactly the same thing. I chose that one to quote because it features my favorite word: flummox. It's a colloquial and vulgar word, according to the OED. "The formation seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily; compare flump, hummock, dialect slommock sloven." 

The oldest appearance is 1837 in Dickens's "Pickwick Papers": "Ve got Tom Vildspark off that 'ere manslaughter, with a alleybi, ven all the big vigs to a man said as nothing couldn’t save him. And my 'pinion is, Sammy, that if your governor don’t prove a alleybi, he’ll be what the Italians call reg’larly flummoxed, and that’s all about it." 

Italians?! Is that like saying "Pardon my French"? 

"Pardon my French" or "Excuse my French" is a common English language phrase ostensibly disguising profanity as words from the French language. The phrase is uttered in an attempt to excuse the user of profanity, swearing, or curses in the presence of those offended by it, under the pretense of the words being part of a foreign language. Although the phrase is often used without any explicit or implicit intention of insulting the French people or language, it can nevertheless be perceived as offensive and belittling by Francophone speakers. However, most users of the term intend no such belittlement....

Required cultural reference: 

 

Bonus fact (from the above-linked Wikipedia article, "Pardon My French"): The word for a French kiss in French is "une pelle." It means "a shovel." Please use that knowledge wisely!

"In a new graphic-nonfiction book, 'Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration'..."

"... Bryan Caplan, a libertarian economist at George Mason University, makes the radical pro-immigration argument that others don’t. In his view, immigration should be essentially unlimited.... Opening the world’s borders wouldn’t mean abolishing them, Caplan explains.... Governments would relinquish their exclusionary authority, so that anyone, regardless of citizenship, could 'accept a job offer from a willing employer or rent an apartment from a willing landlord.' In one illustration, a cartoon Caplan serves a trillion-dollar blueberry pie; its slices are distributed to landlords with apartments to rent, retirees with newly affordable elder care, and mothers reëntering the workforce thanks to lower child-care costs... Presumably, an open-border policy would lead to a mass exodus [from poorer countries]. And yet an illustrated version of Caplan, working as a Western Union teller, reassures these countries that they would be rewarded with compensatory, monumental remittances. Brain drain wouldn’t be an issue, since the total liberalization of movement would allow everyone—not just the highly skilled—to emigrate.... The illustrations in 'Open Borders' are playful, bright, and irreverent.... [but] they tend to reduce their subjects to caricature. 'Poor countries' are depicted using images of generic slums and anonymous, emaciated brown people; a person who smuggles migrants in the desert is represented as an actual coyote, wearing sunglasses.... "

From "THE CASE FOR OPEN BORDERS/In a new graphic-nonfiction book, a libertarian economist conjures an alternative reality in which immigration is unlimited all over the world" (in The New Yorker).

Here's the book:



I love the way, amidst all that diversity, everyone, including the Statue of Liberty, has the same lipless smile. And every face is saying I'm an optimistic person with simple, practical hopes and all I want is a fair chance to help and contribute. Is it even possible for human eyebrows not to point upward? Everybody means well.

By the way, comic books are a great format for presenting political and policy arguments. I think it's silly, though, to call them "graphic-nonfiction books."

Just when you think huge, prominent eyebrows may be going out of style...

"Unibrowed model Sophia Hadjipanteli takes London Fashion Week by storm" (NY Post). Lots of amazing photographs at the link. Is the model some sort of humorist — a satirist of beauty?

Here's the Instagram page for #unibrowmovement.

And here's "This Model Is Making the 'Unibrow Movement' Happen" (Glamour). It's from September 2017, so maybe it means the unibrow movement is not happening, since it hasn't happened yet. I, for one, am sick of having everyone's eyebrows in my face. Back off! And yet, I've got to say I find this more appealing that the overly made-up, un-unified eyebrows that have been annoying me.

Points for originality — and, yes, I know about Frida Kahlo — and naturalness, nerve, and humor:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sophia ☠️🧿🇨🇾 (@sophiahadjipanteli) on Feb 21, 2020 at 2:16am PST

"One day in early June, Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California, tapped the glass of the bakery case at a Blue Bottle coffee shop on a non-iconic block in Beverly Hills."

"No one seemed to know who she was—another polished professional woman, grabbing an afternoon coffee—which was fine by her. She had chosen the spot, presumably for the anonymity. A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie: caramel chocolate chip, covered in a light snowfall of flaky salt. As Harris broke off small pieces and popped them in her mouth, we talked about her early life, rummaging through the layers for identifying details. The child of immigrant academics who divorced when she was young—her mother, a cancer researcher, came from India, and her father, an economist, from Jamaica—Harris grew up between Oakland and the Berkeley flats, but also spent time in college towns in the Midwest and a few years in Montreal, where her mother was teaching. 'A very vivid memory of my childhood was the Mayflower truck,' she told me. 'We moved a lot.' She speaks some French. She loves to cook and enjoys dancing, puns. She tells her own story uneasily. 'It’s like extracting stuff from me,' she apologized. 'I’m not good at talking about myself.'"

The inauspicious beginning of "Kamala Harris Makes Her Case/The Presidential candidate has been criticized as a defender of the status quo/Can she prove that she’s a force for change?" by Dana Goodyear (The New Yorker).

Here's my screen shot of one of the 2 Blue Bottle coffee shops in Beverly Hills (from Google Maps):



Where do you go when you want to look like just another polished professional and you want to pop a light snowfall of flaky salt and talk about yourself without talking about yourself?

Did I read the rest of the article? Okay, I'll force myself to skim, but I take that opening to mean that Goodyear got nothing out of her. Let's see...

Harris, who is fifty-four, has a billboard smile, and brown eyes that soften easily but just as readily turn skeptical.

historyofoverplucking.

An Instagram account. I'll just give 2 examples:

View this post on Instagram

Bette Davis

A post shared by @ historyofoverplucking on Oct 19, 2017 at 2:51pm PDT

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @historyofoverplucking on Oct 12, 2017 at 4:30pm PDT

"In the post-Honey Badger era, it’s become increasingly common for large corporations to appropriate viral memes for their own marketing purposes."

"Critics argue that the creators of these memes, who are often teenagers and frequently people of color, rarely have the opportunity to monetize their work. 'Want to profit of[f] your meme? Good luck if you aren’t white,' read a 2017 headline in Wired magazine after Kayla Lewis, who goes by Peaches Monroee on social media and is credited with creating the phrase 'eyebrows on fleek,' launched a GoFundMe campaign asking for donations so that she could start her own cosmetics line. Before launching the campaign, the magazine noted, Lewis hadn’t made any money off the phrase, even after companies like IHOP, Taco Bell, and Forever 21 used it. And meme creators only have a small window of time to monetize their viral fame before the Internet moves on to something new, [argued the lawyer for Christopher Gordon AKA Randall]. 'My client is a creative genius,' he said. 'He had a bolt of lightning, 86 million views on YouTube, was basically a celebrity around the country for about three years and he had a brief window of time to strike while the iron was hot on that. He should be the one — not the defendants in this case — to capitalize on that.'"

From "Honey Badger may not care, but the ‘creative genius’ who took him viral just won a big victory" (WaPo). Gordon was sharp enough to have trademarked the lines "Honey Badger Don’t Care" and "Honey Badger Don’t Give a S—."

Note that Gordon's original viral video wasn't made by him at all. It was National Geographic video. He just provided the audio track.

ADDED: It's inherent in the nature of memes and virality that people repeat something. "Honey badger don't care" would be nothing if people hadn't passed it on and found it fun to repeat. I'd be very careful about letting people own catch phrases. How are the rest of us supposed to speak? All our words are stolen if you get too picky about what it means to steal.

IN THE COMMENTS: Laslo Spatula says:

There is a nascent post to be made in analyzing the Honey Badger video now in the context of The Era Of That's Not Funny.

The pseudo-gay voice is obviously problematic.

He is also appropriating the Honey Badger's culture for his own benefit, and mocking it in the process.

The celebration of an animal for its violent and selfish tendencies is also troublesome: indeed, the video could be seen as a Trojan Horse for celebrating the American Conservative White Male.

To begin.

Ocasio-Cortez derangement syndrome.

Some people seem to be losing their mind over a politically beautiful face. Linked by Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit, here's Thomas Lifson at American Thinker:

Someone with deep knowledge of what expensive make-up can do to remake a human visage into something very different from the au naturel version went to work on her. In tandem with her transformation from nerd to a female Che Guevara, she morphed from capitalist to membership in a party that wants to “abolish profit.”

Ever since an iconic photograph of Che Guevara was enough to cover-up and glamorize a murderous thug who made a point of watching his opponents executed by firing squad, the puppet masters of the radical left have understood the value of a dramatic and glamorous picture in brainwashing young skulls full of mush.

I don’t know who got ahold of young Ms. Ocasio Cortez and paid for the makeover, but it was someone who understands the manipulation of the “masses” (as they describe their targeted dupes) very well.

The 2 photos do indeed create a very different impression, but you're comparing a 28-year-old face to a 22-year old face. Other than that, the difference is lipstick — who cares if it's "expensive" or not? — and pulling the hair back into a bun instead of letting it hang loose. And one picture is a frame taken from low-quality video while the other is a professionally lit still photograph (probably photoshopped for use on a campaign poster).

There is one other thing: eyebrows. Eyebrows have been a big deal these last few years, and the magazines aimed at all classes of women have stressed makeup tips for eyebrows. Here's Cosmopolitan from a couple months ago: "11 Easy Ways to Get Your Best Brows Ever/Because the simplest trick can make the biggest difference." In keeping with the current style, Ocasio-Cortez has accentuated her eyebrows.

Ocasio-Cortez is a naturally great looking woman. Her current look doesn't prove that "someone with deep knowledge" has done a "transformation" and that "someone who understands the manipulation of the 'masses'" is backing her and has "got ahold of" her.

But nice job of showing how scared of her you are.

Not just for Justin Trudeau anymore: Fake eyebrows are worn by the fictional President of the United States in that novel "co-written" by Bill Clinton.

I'm reading that brilliant, hilarious Anthony Lane essay in The New Yorker, "Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s Concussive Collaboration/'The President Is Missing' contains most of what you’d expect from this duo: politico-historical ramblings, mixed metaphors, saving the world. But why is there no sex?" As the title suggests, the essay is jam-packed with great observations, but I'm just blogging enough to tell you about the eyebrows:

Jon Duncan is the President of the United States... “a war hero with rugged good looks and a sharp sense of humor,” not to mention a beguiling modesty... Duncan is facing possible impeachment... Another problem: a female assassin is in the offing.... There are also a couple of computer wonks, motives unclear: the first, “a cross between a Calvin Klein model and a Eurotrash punk rocker,” if you can picture such a creature; the second, a frightened fellow who arranges a covert meeting with the President at Nationals Park. Nail-gnawing stuff.

No wonder Duncan dreams of sitting there in the stadium, crisis-free, with a hot dog and a beer. And he knows which beer, too: “At a ball game, there is no finer beverage than an ice-cold Bud,” he says to himself. Not since Daniel Craig practically ruined “Casino Royale” by pimping his watch to Eva Green (“Rolex?” “Omega.” “Beautiful”) has a product been placed with such unblushing zeal.

The reason Duncan can attend the game, alone, is that he’s wearing a Nationals cap, plus thickened eyebrows and spectacles. Aided by this impenetrable disguise, he slips out of the White House and, bereft of a security detail, goes on the lam....

Google books let me get a screen grab and saved me from having to buy the Kindle text to show you this. Click to enlarge:

"In the 1780s, just to show that creative ridiculousness really knew no bounds, it became briefly fashionable to wear fake eyebrows made of mouse skin."

A line from Bill Bryson's "At Home: A Short History of Private Life" that sprang to mind this morning when I saw the tweeting about Justin Trudeau:

Justin Trudeau’s left eyebrow detached after meeting Trump — so what? These days, who doesn’t wear fake eyebrows? pic.twitter.com/EZTeYllCrH

— Mike (@Doranimated) June 10, 2018

Ooh! The eyebrows have their own Twitter feed:

To those who struggle with fake eyebrows everywhere. I am your leader and I will dance my way to acceptance. #SundayMorning

— Trudeau’s Eyebrows (@TrudeasE) June 10, 2018

ADDED: More seriously, via Yahoo:

Just minutes after a joint communique, approved by the leaders of the Group of Seven allies, was published in Canada's summit host city Quebec, US President Donald Trump launched a Twitter broadside, taking exception to comments made by Trudeau at a news conference.

"He really kinda stabbed us in the back," top US economic advisor Larry Kudlow said of Trudeau on CNN's "State of the Union." "He did a great disservice to the whole G7.... We went through it. We agreed. We compromised on the communique. We joined the communique in good faith," Kudlow said.

US trade advisor Peter Navarro, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," reinforced that message. "There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," he said.

The eyebrows are symbolic.