Based on the infamous “live, laugh, love” phrase that is featured on countless signs and t-shirts, a new phrase intended to function as an ironic parody of female empowerment is currently trending on social media: gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss.
The term “girlboss” is used to define a woman who is successful, self-made and, essentially, acting as a boss. Moreover, it distinguishes women in leadership positions as in direct opposition to men in leadership positions. Popularized by Sophia Amoruso in her 2014 autobiography, it was originally regarded as empowering and uplifting–an expression of feminist praxis–but in more recent times, it has been criticized as being ironic, demeaning, and rather anti-feminist. By prefixing “boss” with “girl,” the phrases alludes to the notion that female bosses are inherently different from male bosses—and, due to the social dynamic that always positions males as dominant and females as submissive, the underlying message is that a “girlboss” is not only different from but also less than a “boyboss” (a phrase that doesn’t even exist). In reality, a girlboss is just a boss… and a female CEO is just a CEO.
On March 3rd, Hulu launched a new miniseries that dramatizes the story of Elizabeth Holmes–former CEO of Theranos–starring Amanda Seyfried as the ambitiously dangerous young woman: The Dropout. The miniseries is largely based on an episode of ABC News’ award-winning primetime program “20/20” that coined the title “The Dropout” and was aired two years prior to the Hulu show’s release; in an hour and twenty minutes, the 20/20 episode serves as an informative exposé piece that includes interviews with many prominent individuals involved in the case that first sparked national interest back in 2015 and is evidently still garnering media and public interest.
Elizabeth Holmes was born in 1984 in Washington, D.C. to an affluent, successful family. Since a young age, she is known to have been extremely achievement-oriented with an unrelenting desire to always be the best, telling adults that she wanted to be a billionaire when she grew up. These formative characteristics can be seen in The Dropout, which features a scene from her adolescence in which she refuses to quit a track race even though she comes in last place far after the other runners as well as an episode that revolves around her favorite song: “I’m in a Hurry” (a fact that is confirmed in her high school yearbook).
But Holmes wasn’t just ambitious in her intentions, she had the intelligence and academic abilities to back it up. She attended St. John’s School, a co-educational independent K-12 school in Houston, where she excelled in many subjects and developed an interest in computer science. During high school, Holmes was accepted into Stanford University’s Mandarin summer program in China–this is where she first met Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who would soon become an important person in both her personal and professional life.
In 2002, Elizabeth Holmes began her freshman year at Stanford University as a Presidential Scholar studying chemical engineering. Her high academic record paired with her persistence earned her a spot in Dr. Channing Robertson’s lab; Robertson was her advisor, mentor, and the first to support her scientific inventions and company. Holmes’ first invention was a wearable patch that could administer drugs through a patient’s skin in order to simplify medication for those with serious illnesses, for which she submitted a patent application during her freshman year. Shortly after, she changed her idea to a device that could test the blood of patients for several diseases with just “one drop of blood.”
While Dr. Robertson backed her ideas, Professor Phyllis Gardner was truthful in telling the young student that it would not work and that she should focus on learning first; Gardner was the first of many to see through Holmes’ fraudulent personality and question her character as well as her work. Despite the lack of support from Professor Gardner and others, Elizabeth Holmes was stubborn, ambitious, and slightly ignorant—she dropped out of Stanford University in 2003, after only one year of a college education, and collected financial support from family members and friends in addition to the rest of her tuition money from her parents to found her startup company: Theranos.
Starting with $6 million, Elizabeth brought together a small team of scientists and board members to create her growing company. The original members of Theranos, who worked out of a small office building in Palo Alto, included: engineers Edmund Ku and Rakesh Madhava, biochemist Ian Gibbons, and several board members–including wealthy (old, white) businessmen George Shultz and Don Lucas–who contributed largely to the funding of the start-up. Put simply, the business side of Theranos was operating much quicker than the actual scientific and engineering side of it.
They were pitching their product–a so-called “nanotainer” blood collection vessel, nicknamed “the Edison”–to investors and corporations without actually having a working product. When Theranos hit their first real bump in the road, the female CEO brought in her secret lover–the aforementioned Sunny Balwani, who was 19 years her senior–as COO of the company with a $13 million investment. As COO and, more importantly, as her life partner, Balwani not only knew of the secrets and deceptions going on under the roof of Theranos’s new Silicon-Valley style headquarters, but he also encouraged Elizabeth to often do what was best for the company even if it meant harming individuals.
The scam that Theranos was eventually revealed to be started small and grew rapidly. As depicted in the miniseries, Holmes started by lying to her investors and board members, which progressed to faking results at demos/pitches and making false promises to big companies (most notably Walgreens) until they were taking blood samples from real people and administering fake, falsified results. Holmes even kept many of her own employees in the dark in order to hide the fact that Theranos was thinning blood samples and using a Sieman’s machine that they counterfeited as their own since their own technology never existed. Holmes and her inner team were not simply gatekeeping, they were outright lying to everyone. Oftentimes, employees who questioned their work or even employees who were simply thought to be getting suspicious or otherwise in the way would be brutally fired by Balwani; depictions of this can be seen in several episodes of The Dropout, which shows how employees of Theranos were required to sign a NDA and would often be subject to gaslighting in addition to verbal threats before being escorted out of the building.
In episode 5 of The Dropout, entitled “Flower of Life” after the company’s logo, Elizabeth says: “This isn’t just my company. This isn’t just my job. This is my religion. This is who I am. And anyone who doubts my company, doubts me.” On this note, her lying and deception did not stop in the office; she is known to have tailored her appearance and demeanor in order to contribute to this farce. Black turtleneck inspired by her admiration, arguably her obsession, with Steve Jobs. Smudged red lipstick, messy black eyeliner, and messy hair: intended to appeal to the male gaze, as her target investors and business partners were all men, yet still have them take her seriously. Low baritone voice, also intended to encourage men to take her seriously. Extensive nodding while talking to subconsciously encourage people to agree with her.
The downfall of Theranos came when it was at its highest point—at least to the public eye. By 2014, the company was valued at $9 billion. Holmes’ face was featured on the covers of Fortune, Forbes, and The New York Times as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire (the epitome of “girlboss,” if you will), and the business, technology, and medical worlds all believed they had a true revolution in their hands.
However, several antagonists of Holmes were working behind the scenes with The Wall Street Journal to reveal the secrets and lies underlying Theranos. These individuals included: Richard Fuisz, a family friend who was involved in a brutal lawsuit against the company; Rochelle Gibbons, the widow of Ian Gibbons who committed suicide after being personally taken advantage of and manipulated by Elizabeth; Phyllis Gardner, the Stanford professor who had always believed Elizabeth was a scam; Tyler Shultz, the grandson of George P. Shultz and former lab intern at Theranos; and other former employees, board members, and investors. Long story short, these individuals served as whistleblowers providing testimonies along with company documents for journalist John Carreyrou’s investigative piece (eventually published as Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup), which sparked investigations by CMS, HHS, FDA, and the FBI.
In 2018, Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were indicted on 11 counts of fraud to which both pleaded not guilty. After being delayed due to the pandemic and Holmes’ pregnancy with her new husband Billy Evans, the trial began in August 2021 and Elizabeth was found guilty on four counts of fraud in January 2022. She will be officially sentenced in September 2022.
If you have made it to the end of this article, I strongly encourage you to watch Hulu’s The Dropout as well as ABC New’s 20/20 episode “The Dropout.” The Hulu miniseries has released 7 episodes as of this past week, with the last episode set to air on Thursday, April 7th. It does not need to dramatize the true story very much, as the drama is already there. Not to mention, Amanda Seyfried gives an amazing performance as Elizabeth Holmes—who is arguably a “successful psychopath” due to her inability to empathize with others, her abnormal obsession with success, and the show’s quote: “I don’t feel things the way other people feel things.”