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I expect certain things from a Gwyneth Paltrow interview. Breathless outfit details. Her cooking something unexpectedly indulgent for the interviewer, or appearing more laid-back than her image suggests. Spacey pronouncements. What I don’t expect to read is: “I need to optimize EBITDA” (that’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, for the non-business-speaking people) or “impacting my P&L” (profit and loss). These quotes come from Paltrow’s recent Vanity Fair profile, in which she also referred to recent layoffs from her wellness empire, Goop, as a “reorg” and described its sexual wellness clients as: “Not the best customers from an LTV perspective,” which I learn means “lifetime value” – having bought the notorious vagina egg for a laugh, they don’t come back for cashmere and casserole dishes.
Tempting as it is to linger in the Goop-verse – so fragrant, so self-actualised – I’m mostly interested in Paltrow’s uninhibited adoption of biz-speak. It was unexpected in a glossy feature with her looking a billion dollars, accessorised with two equally fabulous borzois. Normally, if I wanted to hear someone talk about EBITDA, I’d turn off my noise-cancelling headphones and eavesdrop on my husband’s work calls. But Paltrow has always had a shrewd eye for the zeitgeist, so I’m wondering: does this herald the second coming of the out-and-proud girlboss?
Exhibit B is the Duchess of Sussex calling her new podcast “Confessions of a Female Founder”. While it’s more fluff than hardcore hustlebro, entrepreneurship is the hook, and there’s plenty of business speak: ideation, incubation, metrics, the fact that she’s “ab-so-lutely consumed with packaging”.
Is there a female celebrity out there who isn’t leveraging her personal brand into an actual brand? Besides the Kardashian industrial complex, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Scarlett Johansson and Selena Gomez have beauty lines; Jessica Alba and Courteney Cox have homeware brands; Blake Lively and Eva Longoria sell booze; Drew Barrymore has a multichannel empire. Yes, male stars are doing it too, but it seems to me the women have taken the world’s intense interest in how they look and what they consume – and found ways of capitalising on that.
The original girlboss movement has a deservedly bad rap: its sparkly, “yay, female empowerment” rhetoric did little to address the structural obstacles to women’s professional success. But when it comes to the 2025 version, I respect the hustle, because times are tough. Spotify has stripped away musicians’ ability to make money, and while Hollywood’s A-list women make megabucks (until they can be satisfactorily deepfaked for a whole feature film), it’s generally less than the men – a gender pay gap mirrored across the cultural sector. Then there’s the shadow of what Amy Schumer satirised as their “last fuckable day” hanging over all but a handful of Oscar-worthy outliers. Alchemising social media eyeballs and parasocial prurience into a revenue stream over which you have real control seems like solid good sense, and there’s something quite satisfying in hearing Paltrow ditch the woo-woo momentarily, and talk like the steely businesswoman she obviously is.
But can civilians girlboss like Paltrow and co? I’m interested because as a gen X creative – recently said by the New York Times to be an endangered, or at least impoverished, species – my personal P&L has taken a hit recently.
On the plus side, like Paltrow, I’m “going through hardcore perimenopause”, navigating an empty nest and waking early to check my email in the dark (though mine mostly come from the indefatigable Royal Dutch Mint from whom I bought one coin as a joke in 2015, making me a poor LTV proposition). But with no marketable personal brand, ability to read a balance sheet or even Meghan’s jam-making skills, my earnings forecast remains pessimistic.
The one thing I’m good at is words, so, inspired by Paltrow, I’ll start by talking the talk: entrepreneurship is a confidence game, right? Looking forward, my key deliverable for Q3 is ensuring adequate working capital (chicory) for my cost centres (pet tortoises). To achieve that, KPIs include rationalising core spend (ditching pilates), seeking synergies (nicking my husband’s clothes) and exploring diversified revenue streams (TBC: does my bunion mean selling foot pics is out?). As the vintage girlboss-era phrase has it, perhaps I can fake it till I make it.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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