Teen Bo$$! An Entrepreneurial Magazine For (Very) Young Girls

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in America. Some might even say it is too well. One new magazine that launched in September 2017, called Teen Bo$$!, aims to rope young girls into the money-making lifestyle in the name of equal opportunity. 

“Jojo reveals how she went from TWEEN TO TYCOON!” shouts the cover of one issue of the publication. This is just one of many young-girl success stories hawked by its pages; every headline urges the nation’s female children and teens to become capitalists. 

The aspirational aspect is not only financial, it’s also about how girls should behave while they make cash by selling their products and themselves—what Jia Tolentino calls the “cute-plus-badass marketing template for female ambition” in her essay about it for the New Yorker. 

This ambition rarely sleeps. Kids as young as eight years old describe their working habits for the magazine: how they became and stayed social media stars or launched their own product lines.

The magazine's content is emblematic of American aspirations and values, and while it's laudable to make sure young women have every opportunity open to them, it’s easy to forget we have more options for what to do with our lives beyond the “monetizable self.”