Exposing LuLaRoe, the # GirlBoss-Feminism company that scammed thousands of white women

By now you have heard that the reign of the girlboss is over. As a number of female industry leaders step down for perpetuating toxic work environments, and some even face federal court on alleged fraud and conspiracy, the liberal hypothesis that women who exploit capitalist structures can radically transform corporate culture and improve the lives of working women. is slowly put to rest.

As with any cultural object that has lost its luster, it is instinctive to want to retrace the steps that have led us to this unified place of fatigue and skepticism. Recently writers, journalists and filmmakers have participated in this exercise with varying – and sometimes inadvertently – results illustrating the universal persuasion of wealth and power and confusing the superficial rewards of representational politics. Today, Amazon offers the latest entry in this canon, a four-part docusery called LuLaRich it doesn’t focus so much on the rise and fall of a single boss girl, but portrays the ease and effectiveness of selling this empowerment fantasy to a particular subset of millennial women.

Ripe for serialization in our scam-obsessed age, LuLaRich tells the story of billion dollar fashion retailer LuLaRoe – not to be confused with Lululemon, Lulus or Laila Rowe – a multi-level marketing company known primarily for its gigantic collection of flashy patterned leggings and, since 2017 , faulty clothing, a series of lawsuits and accusations in Washington state that they were operating like a pyramid scheme. In 1988, DeAnne Stidham, originally from Utah, began selling dresses she had bought at the local swap meet, throwing Tupperware-style parties in her house. After more than 20 years of reselling dresses, she and her second husband Mark started a maxi dress business that went viral on Facebook and put them in touch with the first woman to buy from their stock, setting up the MLM or direct selling business model. and the launch of LuLaRoe in 2013.

After experiencing a few years of high demand, lucrative bonus checks, and employee benefits, LuLaRoe’s first and longest-serving salespeople began to experience the company’s downsides. From receiving poorly designed and even moldy clothes that they couldn’t return to paying personal expenses to attend compulsory conferences, the American dream they had subscribed to for hundreds of thousands of dollars faded away, prompting the mobilization of ‘aggrieved employees on Facebook. and the inevitable disgrace of the company.

Just like their approach to the 2019 documentary Fraud to guys, LuLaRichCo-directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason construct a compelling yet familiar story using an assortment of puzzling testimonials from former LuLaRoe retailers, employees and members of the Stidham family who have held leadership positions, ideas for ‘cultural and business experts, pop culture clips, testimony footage, and a central interview with DeAnne and Mark, whose mega-church pastor charisma and surprising Mormon values ​​(they happily share that two of their children, who are not biologically related, are married) will certainly commemorate them alongside the Joe Exotics and Billy McFarlands who have captured the nation’s attention for the past two years.

Viewers unfamiliar with LuLaRoe’s story but who enjoy the con artist documentaries subgenre will immediately recognize, if not predict, many of the show’s wacky beats and devices, especially in the cartoonish character of bro. -y of the company’s former events coordinator, Sam Schultz, celebrity cameos and cult representation of the company. As we learn that DeAnne was pressuring women to fly to Tijuana for weight loss surgery, that seems like the only logical direction the increasingly wacky series could go. Plus, the show’s visual cues can feel heavy at times. I’m not sure the audience needs a pan on a Barbie doll as Jill Filipovic reads the how-to book DeAnne’s Mother writes about being a traditionally feminine woman. Do we really need to see a clip of Charlie and Papy Joe singing “(I’ve Got A) Golden Ticket” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory after Schultz used the golden ticket metaphor?

While LuLaRich tells a sufficiently compelling story about the predatory and absorbing nature of MLMs, he’s less adept at analyzing the demographic paradoxes they successfully attract into their networks – religious middle-class white women and stay-at-home moms, in especially military wives and Mormon women in Utah where there is the most MLM per capita. Women in traditional marriages where their primary role is to raise children are more likely to join MLMs because their flexibility allows them to work from home.

Likewise, the docuseries expose how LuLaRoe’s marketing deployed pop-feminist language and the ‘boss babe’ image to recruit mothers and wives while slyly promoting a politically conservative message about women’s obligation to owe their families. Essentially, the company told women “she can have it all” while hinting that “she” should want her family the most.

Journalist Jill Filipovic, whose presence mostly made me wonder why no black culture writer has been approached to speak out on this subject, laconically remarks that the fashion company has sold a “white vision” motherhood and work-life balance, as LuLaRoe-sponsored social media posts of white heterosexual couples and their children posing in their backyards appear onscreen. However, the series does not explain how these women’s relationship to the labor market and their family dynamics differ from the realities of working-class and non-white women, especially black women, who historically have always had to work hard. by raising children. Two employees of color point to the company’s lack of diversity (former member LaShae Kimbrough, who is black, shares particularly amusing tidbit about the company’s decline in cruising due to the overwhelming number of whites), but directors do not provide any real context as to why the company attracted the demographics that it did.

LuLaRich may not garner as much fanfare as Fraud to guys– these are leggings, after all – but it will certainly attract culturally conscious individuals interested in the intersections of religion, feminism, capitalism, athletics, and white femininity. While he may be more rigorous in his analysis of these colliding cultural events, he manages to tell a compelling story that will have you laughing and capturing dialogue for memes until you are completely overwhelmed with frustration and frustration. disappointment at the end.