Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss: Agrippina the Younger

Live, laugh, love. 

Snap, crackle, pop. 

Veni, vidi, vici.  

I’m sure you’re all familiar with these common phrases. They are examples of the tricolon, from Greek τρία meaning “three” and κῶλον meaning “clause.” When making a list, this device is used because two is too few, four is a bore, but three is the key. See? I just made a tricolon of my own. They’re catchy and easy to remember, which leads to their obvious popularity. However, Sam Corbin, writer for the New York Times asks: “Do good things actually come in threes?" In the case of “gaslight, gatekeep girlboss,” perhaps not.

Before I can define the full phrase, it is important to isolate the term "girlboss" first. It emerged in 2014 when Sophia Amoruso, founder of Nasty Gal, coined the term as the title of her autobiography. In it, Amoruso explains how she went from "hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and scrounging in dumpsters" to founding a successful fashion company. The book inspired businesswomen and beyond and provided a neologism for the growing movement for feminism in the workplace. Megan Kelly, a sociology graduate student at the University of Michigan defines the term girlboss as "an attempt to reconcile femininity and being like, ‘Yes, I can fulfill our cultural ideals of femininity, and at the same time, I can have a powerful position at work. I can combine those two things successfully.'" In addition to Nasty Gal, other companies such as Glossier, Reformation, and SoulCycle identified with the neologism as brands founded by women, for women.

If you're like me, and you had never heard of Amoruso's company Nasty Gal before this blog, are you wondering why? Perhaps it is because the company filed for bankruptcy in 2016 after allegations of a toxic workplace environment circulated and a lawsuit was filed the year prior. The three other companies I referenced have also had similar issues (though they are still in business). In 2020, former Glossier employees came together to form "Outta the Gloss," an Instagram account used to expose the abuse and discrimination they experienced at the company. The same year, several women of color and former Reformation employees came forward with stories of racist mistreatment, which prompted the founder of the company, Yael Aflalo, to issue a public apology. Former employees of SoulCycle have also commented on the toxic work environment and discouragement of pregnancy they endured during their time at the company.

In all of these cases, the companies' leadership was called into question regardless of personal culpability. In the case of Glossier, understaffing, working in unsanitary and hostile conditions, an unresponsive HR system, and a lack of minority representation in leadership positions were the main topics of the complaints. In response, Emily Weiss, founder of Glossier and CEO until 2022, posted an apology on Glossier's website (which has since been removed) and had the Instagram account post for the same reason. Aflalo, founder and CEO of Reformation ended up stepping down after her public apology because she was directly mentioned in some of the complaints and needed to take accountability. Finally, the complaints against SoulCycle were more against general leadership, but also included a quote from former CEO Melanie Whelan saying: "paternity leave is for p*ssies" when a male employee asked to take it.

While the involvement of the female founders in these situations varied, circumstances like these ruined the idea of “girlboss” due to the companies' connections to the term. The concept behind "girlboss" was meant to inspire women, but not only did it end up being used to tear women down, but also made people realize that women holding positions of power did not mean that the patriarchal systems in workplaces would be dismantled. Rather, these girlbosses became products of their male-dominated environments and ended up using the systems in place for their personal gain, all the while promoting positivity and inclusivity. As the queens who spearheaded the girlboss movement fell from their thrones, the term slowly began to lose its luster.

The book-title-turned-neologism gained more attention and began to surface on the internet tied to other phrases like "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss." The phrase began circulating in 2021 after a Tumblr post by missnumber1111.

On their own, "gaslight" has become a buzzword for saying someone is a trickster or liar, and to "gatekeep" means to keep people away from information/opportunities. The association of girlboss with the two other negative g-words assisted the shift of girlboss’s meaning “from iconic to ironic," and the full phrase is now used on the internet in situations that have nothing to do with the term “girlboss.” Sometimes there’s no reason to use the three-word phrase other than the fact that a picture has three people in it, like this example of Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ashoka from Star Wars: The Clone Wars. 

While Agrippina the Younger did not run a company, she essentially ran the Roman Empire through the influence she had over her biological uncle/husband Claudius, and son, Nero. However, as we will see, she girlbossed a little too close to the sun (or son, rather), and just like the term itself, fell from grace.

Agrippina the Younger was the great-granddaughter of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, and sister of emperor Caligula, the third emperor. While her connection to the Julian side of the Julio-Claudian dynasty was more pronounced, it was not until she married her uncle, emperor Claudius, in 49 CE that she seemed to have cemented her position officially “link[ed] Julian and Claudian posterity.”¹ While the fact that their relationship was first defined as uncle/niece before husband/wife, Agrippina was chosen by the senate to be Claudius’ next wife because she was a “woman notable for nobility, childbearing and purity,” so this fact was overlooked.² These descriptions of Agrippina make it clear that she both fulfilled the Roman ideals of femininity and held a position of significant influence in the Roman Empire. According to the earlier quote from Megan Kelly, this is everything a girlboss is supposed to be: feminine and powerful. This perfect image was circulated (at least for a while) in the form of things like imperial coinage, portraits, and inscriptions, many of which were made upon her son Nero's ascension to the throne.³ In these, depictions and descriptions of Agrippina often went alongside those of Emperor Nero to highlight her "special position."⁴

Nero (left) being crowned by his mother, Agrippina the Younger (right).

While these examples make it clear that Agrippina held a position of power in the Roman Empire, unlike most women at the time, her power was recognized publicly, known to the Romans as auctoritas.⁵ This Latin word is hard to define in just one way, but it can be translated as "authority." Agrippina's authority was shown in several different ways, such as:

• She was given two lictores, or public attendants.⁶ A lictor was the protector of a magistrate or other high-ranking individual. Livia, Emperor Augustus' wife, was only granted one but only used it when she was acting as the priestess of Augustus. The fact that she had two when other imperial women had only had one showed the public that Agrippina was "a woman who had a quasi-official share in the administration of the principate."⁷

• She received the title Augusta during Emperor Claudius' lifetime, something which (once again) no other imperial woman had done.⁸ It has been suggested that the title comes from the Latin verb augere ("to augment or increase"), symbolizing an increase in Agrippina's power and status.⁹

• She sought (and succeeded) to establish a colony of veterans in Germany at the site of her birthplace.¹⁰ This colony, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (Cologne) was named after her family line.¹¹

• She was granted the conspicuous honor of sitting beside her husband in front of Roman legionary standards as he pardoned Caratacus, a British chieftain who resisted Roman conquest.¹² As Tacitus elaborates, "it was a novelty, unlike long-standing custom, that a woman preside over Roman standards. But she conducted herself as partner in an empire won by her forebears."¹³

Just like the "girlbosses" who pushed boundaries in the modern-day business world, Agrippina the Younger pushed boundaries and managed to do things previously unseen by the Roman Empire. However, this was precisely what led to her downfall. She used the power she had to influence whoever she could - soldiers, senators, and citizens - to do her bidding. Perhaps the best example of this is how Agrippina's biggest goal was to see her son on the throne after her husband. Claudius already had a son and heir, Britannicus. Despite this, Agrippina knew that if she could get Claudius to adopt Nero, he would be "given precedence over Britannicus."¹⁴ To do this, she enlisted the help of Pallas, a freedman who she was allegedly involved with, and he managed to convince the emperor to make Nero his stepson and preferred heir.¹⁵ To solidify this, Agrippina later took a report of a hostile interaction between Nero and Britannicus to her husband. After hearing from his wife that Britannicus was supposedly rejecting the adoption, Claudius exiled or executed his teachers and allowed Agrippina to put her own men in charge of the boy's education.¹⁶

However, Claudius eventually caught on to Agrippina’s plan to put Nero on the throne. Cassius Dio tells us that against the wishes of Agrippina, Claudius began to show more affection to Britannicus and wanted to declare him heir instead, therefore putting “an end to her power.”¹⁷ To prevent this, Agrippina allegedly decided to kill her husband using poison and enlisted the help of Locusta, a woman famous for her work with poisons.¹⁸ She also engineered the deaths of other rivals or threats to her plans for her son’s succession.¹⁹ Now with Claudius and his cronies out of the way, Nero was a shoo-in as the next emperor.

Once he took the throne, I’m sure that people wished Britannicus was named heir instead of the mama’s boy. Nero’s “acts of wantonness, lust, extravagance, avarice, and cruelty were gradual and secret” in the beginning, but became worse and more public the longer he was in power.²⁰ Since Agrippina was the one who got him where he was and he was showing interest in doing anything but ruling, she assumed she could maintain her level of influence and basically rule through him. For a while, she seemingly succeeded; Nero flattered his mother by giving his Praetorian Guard tribune the password optimae matris, or “best of mothers” upon his coronation.²¹ However, this may have been Nero’s first attempt at messing with Agrippina, appealing to her vanity and making her believe she had power over him when in reality, she did not.²² Nero, along with his friends, advisors, and other men in power, managed to find ways  to oppose Agrippina, including (but not limited to):

• After Nero read a eulogy for Claudius to the Senate, the Senate responded by passing measures that Agrippina had previously outwardly opposed.²³

• When Agrippina attempted to interfere with Senatorial affairs and preside along with Nero, his tutor Seneca advised him to stop his mother before she could do it.²⁴

• Nero, though married to Claudia Octavia, engaged in several extra-marital relationships against the wishes of his mother.²⁵

Agrippina, realizing that she was losing control, made a final attempt to regain it by making an offer of incest to the emperor.²⁶ There are a few reasons she may have done this: perhaps she was entertaining incest as Caligula and Claudius had, or she thought if was going to have affairs, he should do it with someone who could conceal it.²⁷ No matter what her reasoning was, this action caused Nero to begin directly attacking both Agrippina and her supporters.²⁸ Eventually, Nero enacted a plan to kill his mother; the first attempt was a failed shipwreck and the second was a successful direct assassination. Tacitus tells us that though she was unhappy about it, astrologers had told her this would eventually happen, and her response was: ‘“Let him kill me,” she said, “provided that he rule.”’²⁹

The life and defeat of Agrippina the Younger align perfectly with the life of the girlboss. The corporate girlboss is characterized by her entrepreneurship and eventual downfall after allegations of mistreatment and mistakes. Likewise, Agrippina rose to power through her husband and secured her son’s spot on the throne but ended up being thwarted and eventually murdered for abusing and overstepping her influence. Additionally, just as girlbosses were meant to be aspirational figures but became empty promises, Agrippina is both an example of extraordinary female power never before seen in the Roman Empire and an utter failure due to the clear misuse of power. The main sources we have that discuss Agrippina - Tacitus, Dio, and Suetonius - seem to have agendas of their own or attempt to vilify her using common stereotypes of “unbridled ambition, bloodthirstiness, sexual flagrancy” and beyond.³⁰ It may be that the surviving depictions of Agrippina are misrepresentations of the real woman. However, it is clear that on some level, Agrippina gaslit, gatekept, and girlbossed her way to this reputation herself.

Footnotes:

1. Tacitus, Annals, 12.2.3.

2. Tacitus, Annals, 12.6.

3. Anthony Barret, Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire, (Yale University Press, 1996), 152.

4. Barrett, 152.

5. Susan E. Wood, Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 B.C.-A.D. 68, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999), 249.

6. Tacitus, Annals, 13.2.3.

7. Barrett, 152.

8. Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXII.33.2a.

9. Guy De La Bédoyère, Domina: The Women Who Made Imperial Rome, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 213.

10. Tacitus, Annals, 12.27.

11. De La Bédoyère, 212.

12. Wood, 259.

13. Annals, 12.37.4.

14. De La Bédoyère, 213.

15. Tacitus, Annals, 12.25.

16. Tacitus, Annals, 12.41.3.

17. Roman History, LXI.34.1.

18. Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXI.34.2; Tacitus, Annals, 12.66.2.

19. De La Bédoyère, 230.

20. Suetonius, Nero, XXVI-XXIX.

21. Tacitus, Annals, 13.2.3.

22. De La Bédoyère, 228.

23. Judith Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire, (Oxford University Press, 2006), 38-39.

24. Tacitus, Annals, 13.5.2.

25. Suetonius, Nero, XXVIII-XXIX.

26. Tacitus, Annals, 13.13.2.

27. De La Bédoyère, 238

28. Ginsburg, 42-42.

29. Annals, 14.9.3.

30. Wood, 262-263.