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The curse of the Girlboss Elizabeth Homes could've been the next Gwyneth Paltrow

At her trial, the turtleneck was gone (Theranos)


January 6, 2022   6 mins

If things had played out just a little bit differently, Elizabeth Holmes would have been just another scammy telegenic inventor selling a product too good to be true. In this might-have-been world, there is no scandal, no downfall, no indictment on federal charges and no guilty verdict with likely prison time. Holmes would have never amassed a fortune by promising to revolutionise the multi-billion dollar blood testing industry, never made the cover of Forbes and Fortune, and never lost it all when a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that her entire empire was built on fraudulent claims about a technology that didn’t work.

Instead, she’d be queen of an infomercial empire, wearing her trademark black turtleneck and bright lipstick, bantering with a jocular male co-host about how a lifelong fear of needles inspired her to invent a device for blood testing that required no more than a finger prick. She’d be hawking her Theranos Edison device on daytime TV — buy one, get two free! — and touting it as the busy working person’s workaround to time-consuming and painful medical testing. The limitations of the device would be disclosed up-front (or at least, clearly outlined in the fine print), but nobody would be all that bothered; the Edison would be just another as-seen-on-TV novelty gadget that retirees order on impulse and use a couple times before getting bored and moving onto something else.

Because frauds, scammers, and snake oil salesmen are everywhere, and have always been with us, a warped but essential thread woven tightly into our social fabric. The most gifted of them promise what Holmes did, more or less: a quick fix to a problem that runs too deep, too dark, and too tangled to be pulled out at the root. They prey on our worst insecurities and most potent fears — of getting fat, of going bald, of being poisoned by hidden toxins, of being painfully jabbed with a needle and spending the next week praying that some nascent sickness doesn’t reveal itself in the chemical balance of your blood.

They prey, most of all, on our mistrust of a system that is opaque, indifferent, and populated by experts who too often treat us with disdain or contempt. That’s what makes people pick up the phone and call now to take advantage of this special offer, two vials of snake oil for the price of one. It doesn’t matter if the solution actually works — and it doesn’t, usually. What’s important is, it makes you feel like you’re in control. Like you’re included.

Society allows thousands of con artists to have long and fruitful careers selling their cellulite creams, their silicone bracelets that “rebalance your body’s energy field” — just as long as they never fly too close to the sun. They must not take it too seriously or too far. Some of the best-executed frauds can continue for years, even decades, if they just stay on the right side of the line between frivolity and consequence.

Look at Gwyneth Paltrow, forever making a fortune selling yoni eggs, supplements and sex toys that promise nothing except the satisfaction of feeling like you’re taking care of yourself and the thrill of doing it outside the staid, stodgy, finger-wagging confines of the medical establishment. But Paltrow plays it safe. She keeps it light. She reminds you that what she’s selling is not medicine, but wellness. (Unsaid but implied is that it’s better than medicine, but shh, that’s our little secret.)

And in exchange for slightly limiting their claims about the proven effectiveness of their products, the snake oil salesmen are allowed to dodge the usual rules and regulations that dictate what you can and can’t sell to consumers. This is America, after all; who is the FDA to tell you that you can’t spend your money on any stupid thing you want? Sometimes, it’s easy to see the grift for what it is — the Slap Chop? the Shake Weight? really? — but Silicon Valley and influencer circles have incubated their own version of this culture, glossier and more sophisticated, in which it’s genuinely hard to tell a genius vision from an ordinary scam.

The thing is, sometimes it is genius: every life-altering tech innovation started as an idea too crazy to work, and every celebrated founder did a certain amount of faking it before making it. Even Steve Jobs fudged his way through the very first iPhone presentation with a device that did not actually work, surreptitiously switching out the phone for a new one before the prototype could crash, a story that Elizabeth Holmes was reportedly obsessed with. Like Jobs, she insisted, she wasn’t lying to her investors. She was simply showing them the future. Sure, her product didn’t work — but imagine how amazing it would be if it did?

The twist is, Holmes probably could have been wildly successful, even legit, if she’d just set her sights a little bit lower. With those brains, that face, that voice, and her pitching skills, she could have launched a startup — or become an influencer — in any number of fields. But she wanted more: to occupy the prestigious ranks of the corporate girlbosses, the visionary founders, the moguls who broke the mould. And so the Theranos Edison was inflated, from a don’t-check-the-small-print daytime TV product, to a groundbreaking biotech advancement; and Holmes the huckster became, briefly, the darling wunderkind of Silicon Valley.

Of course, she never really belonged in that club: Holmes, unlike the girlbosses she was always getting lumped-in with, never actually built anything. The fact that she managed to fly so high and linger so long is a testament less to her own abilities than to the brightness of the star to which she hitched her wagon, the fierce desire of so many to see a young, ambitious woman breaking ground in a male-dominated field. It’s a different sort of sexism: the way she dazzled them, and the way the media wanted to believe. Elizabeth Holmes wasn’t just too good to be true, but too good to verify.

Glamour magazine’s fawning 2015 profile described critiques of the Theranos founder as just so much chest-thumping from threatened competitors: “Like any disruptor, Holmes has stirred up controversy.” The blitheness of that line now contrasts amusingly with a chagrined editor’s note appended above the text in 2018 (“The SEC found that Holmes ‘made numerous false and misleading statements in investor presentations, product demonstrations, and media articles’ — and that includes interviews with Glamour.”) Inc magazine gushed: “She is no impostor. She was an entrepreneur before movies and television made it cool. She is substance where often there’s only flash.”

And so, for a few thrilling years, as investors and fortunes amassed around Theranos, Holmes actually appeared to be leading a herd of high-achieving, self-made female entrepreneurs that included people like Away’s Steph Korey, Glossier’s Emily Weiss, and Outdoor Voices’ Tyler Haney. It wouldn’t be until later, as the cult of the girlboss began to fracture and the herd began to thin, that we’d realise she wasn’t leading the charge at all, but being pushed forward by the sheer force of everyone else’s success, riding the wave of a narrative so powerful that her feet never touched the ground. But when they did, she stumbled immediately — and stumbled hard. And now she’s probably going to prison.

What’s most striking is how Holmes tried and failed to wriggle out from beneath her own hype as the walls closed in. At her trial, the black turtleneck was gone, replaced by a blouse-and-blazer combination and an accessory diaper bag (the better to remind jurors and press that she’s a mother with a newborn at home.) Gone was the image of an ass-kicking visionary, hell-bent on success: Holmes’ defence rested in large part on the notion that she’d been helpless, cowed and manipulated by her former boyfriend and business partner, Sunny Balwani.

Yet the jury didn’t buy it — because Holmes is too brilliant a con artist to also be a damsel in distress. And like any gifted grifter, she created a narrative so compelling that even when it all fell apart, we understood that some small part of it must still be the truth. Not the world-changing technology, but the persona of the woman who promised to deliver it. That’s real; we’re sure of it. The one thing that has always been clearly and demonstrably true of Elizabeth Holmes is that she is too smart not to know exactly what she’s doing.

The myth of Theranos might have shattered, but the legend of its founder lingers on. And as long as society remains in thrall to the narrative of the disruptor, the glass ceiling-breaker, the patriarchy-smasher, she won’t be the only one. If Elizabeth Holmes hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent her — and in some ways, we did. Without all that glowing coverage to prop it up, how much sooner would this paper tiger have toppled? Holmes and others like her will keep coming, because they have the greatest weapon in the con artist’s arsenal: not the slick presentation, not the pretty face, not the lies they tell while looking you dead in the eye, but your own desperate hunger to believe.


Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.

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Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago

Michael Saylor, the world’s greatest pusher of Bit Coin, is the one who really needs a look. He is the ultimate ‘Whale’, tells people to put every penny into it, borrow and invest in it.

Bit Coin is the ultimate sign of the economic times are surpassing ‘Irrational Exuberance’ to become Irrational Psychosis.

Think about money – basically someone produces more than they consume, and the result is wealth. You cut hair, make bicycles, do law or be a doctor… You produce valuable goods and services, and the excess profits you make are ‘Growth’ and wealth. But this is not how the economy works now – it is all finance, smoke and mirrors and insider knowledge and manipulation.

An administrator makes $50,000 p/a, as does his wife. In California (or London, Melbourne) In 2008 they bought a house for $250,000 – now it is worth $2.25 Million. They created nothing – they have 19 times their annual wage, and made no goods and services – this is not prosperity, this is not healthy economy, it is bad money, economically speaking. This is the entire premise of Bit Coin and crypto.

That no goods and services are made, nothing created, improved, Just speculation has driven the price of this thing higher and higher. This is not an economy, this in fact devalues all the money in the system. Crypto is now $$ 3 Trillion! That three Trillion made no goods, instead it enabled 3 $ Trillion to be created in valuation, out of air. These whales bought bit coin at $10. each , fourteen years ago, and it has risen to $56,000 a coin. And still it is NOTHING, it is a Fagazi, smoke…. but the 3 $ Trillion additional devalues the rest of money as it increased money supply wile not increasing goods.

this is Ponzie, South Sea Bubble”, the speculation mania that ruined many British investors in 1720″., Tulip Mania…. but has not popped yet…. it is bad money, and that is not good….

mike otter
mike otter
2 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

Musk, Saylor, Martin Lewis et al will inevitably become prey, mainly because they’ve been such successful predators. They will hunt him with thinbles, they will hunt him with care, they’ll threaten his life with a Tesla share. As far as blockchain and crypto goes i think it has a future – but only as fiat money. It’ll be interesting to see how the e-Krona fares, also Ozzy Osborne’s NFT bat coin is a classic naked Emporer moment which i think Ozzy himself realises, the Bat Coin could well be the source of crypto- covid which brings the whole thing down.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

I think you’ll find the Martin Lewis reference is unfair. His name is being used by Bitcoin scammers because he has a justifiably trusted brand.

Julie Blinde
Julie Blinde
2 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

Bitcoin bad. blockchain good ?
IMHO

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
2 years ago
Reply to  Julie Blinde

Blockchain math has many good uses and will survive. Coin trust relies on that math, would not be possible without the math. Fortunes embedded in a tangible crypto-key? Lose that and the fortune with it.

Warren T
Warren T
2 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

Add to that the sum of borrowing against the $3T in “assets” and bubble grows even larger.

James Joyce
James Joyce
2 years ago

The bad man made me do it….
Now I’m a Mum and the patriarchy is coming for me, solely because I’m a woman and a mum.
EH had no new technology–it was ALL fraud from the beginning. The formula for Coke is a trade secret, but if Pepsi buys Coke by the lorryload and puts it in Pepsi cans and bottles, that is not a competitive product, that is fraud!
The press found the media darling, the GirlBoss too good to check. Epic failure! Come on Liz, let’s hear your real voice–and I mean that literally!

alan Osband
alan Osband
2 years ago
Reply to  James Joyce

She SAYS she has produced a miniaturised version of herself .Any proof ?

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago

Society allows thousands of con artists to have long and fruitful careers selling their cellulite creams, their silicone bracelets that “rebalance your body’s energy field” — just as long as they never fly too close to the sun. 

Noticeably, it is women who are being taken in to a greater extent than men. Why is that? It often seems like every middle class home contains its gullible matron, taken in by the most transparent rubbish, and trying to enforce it on the rest of the family.
And leaving aside some muscle building pundits, the whole influencer business seems to be largely inhabited by females, in some sort of circular conspiracy to dupe each other.
What is going on?

Sean Penley
Sean Penley
2 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

I do think women have more of a natural instinct to be sociable and fit in with the crowd. So when something seems to be the “it” thing/person/activity/whatever, there will be more women who flock to it simply because it’s popular. Not that men are totally immune or anything, I just think the instinct is stronger in women.
I think music is one of the best examples. How many women listen to a pop star simply because the industry and media are pushing them as a star? How many of these pop stars have songs that are memorable or, for that matter, distinguishable from what a dozen others are putting out? (seriously, my gym for some reason plays them most days. If they didn’t put the names on the TV screen I wouldn’t realize they were changing artists nor songs) And once the star is no longer an “it” star, a lot of women will no longer listen to their stuff, not even the songs they used to claim to love.
It was never the music, it was the identity and sense of belonging.

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago
Reply to  Sean Penley

I do think women have more of a natural instinct to be sociable and fit in with the crowd.

It’s interesting. Unless we have an axe to grind, I think most of us would say that there is a distinct female psychology (or at least tendency) with its own risks and pitfalls. And yet, at the same time we are in denial about the negative aspects of this – while asserting positive aspects and emphasising negative aspects of male psychology.
Anecdotal, but I would say that conformity, gullibility and some particularly vicious forms of intrasexual competition are aspects. Women are more sociable – but that sociability seems to be cut through with a fair bit of selective meanness.

Hilary Easton
Hilary Easton
2 years ago
Reply to  Sean Penley

I tend to agree, but surely music is an exception to your thesis, not the best example. It seems to me it’s mainly young men who both perpetrate and fall for the tribal music obsession. I offer High Fidelity in evidence.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
2 years ago
Reply to  David Morley

The same thing as in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

Jeffrey Chongsathien
Jeffrey Chongsathien
2 years ago

Now do Elon Musk, who’s scammed the world into believing Tesla cars are his invention, that it’s been a viable business without taxpayer money and that it’s a green solution (the real green solution to ICE cars is no cars). Let’s not forget his solar roof tile, car tunnel and vacuum tunnel snake oil either.

Last edited 2 years ago by Jeffrey Chongsathien
Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago

X.com and those reusable rockets were pure fiction too.

Ferrusian Gambit
Ferrusian Gambit
2 years ago

X.com wasn’t a fiction, though it didn’t amount to much.
Elon Musk being responsible for Paypal’s success is of course Tolkeinesque level of mythopoeia.
Reusable rockets… nice trick paid for by government contracts. Although McDonnell Douglas had already done that in the 90s so… the least he could have done is used the last 10 years to make it a feasible commercial technology, unless of course, the physics and economics don’t stack up and he’s bilking investors.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ferrusian Gambit
Ferrusian Gambit
Ferrusian Gambit
2 years ago

Elon Musk will certainly hope he’ll be on Mars when he becomes the face of the economic crash.

tom j
tom j
2 years ago

I’m sorry things haven’t worked out for you.

hayden eastwood
hayden eastwood
2 years ago

Amen, Elon Musk is the next Elizabeth Holmes. I’ve got my popcorn out for when that plane goes down from engine failure, pilot error and fire on board.

Last edited 2 years ago by hayden eastwood
Emre Emre
Emre Emre
2 years ago

“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” — Ayn Rand
I feels to me these days Western society is in a state of mass hysteria in denying reality because it’d be a more equitable world that way.
If an individual denies reality, say, goes mad, then others around them can help such a person, sustain them if needed.
If an entire population goes mad, what happens then?

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
2 years ago

Great article – and reflects exactly the thoughts I had about Holmes when I watched a documentary about her a while back: people will believe what they want to believe and fling the doors wide open to the con artists who will ride the wave of whatever narrative is on the wish list.
With regard to Gwyneth Paltrow, I have to repost Julie Burchill’s brilliant article “Put it away, love” – just so funny: https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/02/put-it-away-love/

Kathleen Stern
Kathleen Stern
2 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Thanks for the link to the Julie Burchill article| just priceless!

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
2 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

There are so many gems in that article, but I thought the black and white minstrels one stood out

Thanks

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

I enjoyed this irreverent link immensely. Interestingly I followed the link to the ‘Vagina Museum’ only to be notified that the vagina museum is temporarily closed while they move to a new location. Maybe the liquor licence hasn’t worked out for them.
I think I remember a male US talk show host ordering one of Gwynnie’s ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’ candles last year. I don’t think he was convinced, but then again, he is gay.

Ferrusian Gambit
Ferrusian Gambit
2 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Yes, I am seeing this on multipe fronts. People hyping and scaremongering with little understanding. Whether virtual reality, blockchain, AI, EVs, hyperloop, few people are asking basical questions about feasibility. I think in certain business areas has become socially unacceptable to be pessimistic.

neil collins
neil collins
2 years ago

A fine piece. I would add only that Theranos reacted with fury and rottweiler lawyers to anyone who dared to ask an awkward question. That’s a flapping red flag.

Douglas McNeish
Douglas McNeish
2 years ago
Reply to  neil collins

As did Robert Maxwell, infamously.

William Murphy
William Murphy
2 years ago

As the article so truly says, con artists have been with us forever. If only Elizabeth had stuck to hawking something like Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir she wouldn’t be facing years in the slammer.

https://youtu.be/4jAvUNwaXyE

Mike Smith
Mike Smith
2 years ago
Reply to  William Murphy

Or candles that smell like her punani!

mike otter
mike otter
2 years ago

Great article thanks

Joseph Meissner meissner and associates and Lawyers for Life
Joseph Meissner meissner and associates and Lawyers for Life
2 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

Maybe a little mercy and sympathy for a great inspiring lady is warranted. I mean that. Elizabeth Holmes, I pray you get no time in jail. As for the people who may have lost money, they were buying a dream and they go it. I am sure their attorneys and accountants will help all of them even Henry so they come out all right.

James Joyce
James Joyce
2 years ago

This is truly a despicable comment! A “great inspiring lady?” Did you think Bernie Madoff a great inspiring investor?
You claim to be an attorney, yet show profound ignorance of the law. It’s OK to be a complete fraudster and lie to investors over and over and over because people were “buying a dream?” How will these investors come out all right? Hundreds of millions of investors $ were fleeced–is there a magic wand that you can wave and make them “come out all right?” Pathetic, especially for an attorney.
EH is not a great lady, a horrible person, and I hope she rots in prison for a very long time. Let’s hope the prosecutors are “lawyers for life” and EH gets life!

Brian Hunt
Brian Hunt
2 years ago

As an engineer, I’m surprised how gulllible people are when presented with supposed ‘Gee Wizz’ technology. Asking the critical questions perhaps gets ignored when someone else is paying.
A good example is the couple here who sold their fake bomb detectors around the world: Married couple guilty of making fake bomb detectors in garden shed they claimed ‘could find Madeline McCann’
They made £80m from that scam, selling plastic boxes with telescopic ariels.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
2 years ago
Reply to  Brian Hunt

Recall that Holmes erected huge legal barriers to anyone discovering the scam, including her workers. The promising beginning failing as research stalled. Her crime was never being truthful as the scheme collapsed. She was a victim (maybe) of her own hubris and press.

Ferrusian Gambit
Ferrusian Gambit
2 years ago
Reply to  Hardee Hodges

There is a general collapse of accounting visibility that is a part of the new ‘startup’ economy. I suspect it is going to come back after a disaster.

Ferrusian Gambit
Ferrusian Gambit
2 years ago
Reply to  Brian Hunt

I am a software engineer and at least part of this stems from the fact people don’t understand the basic technology around them. It isn’t that hard to understand how a car works, how the electricty is wired in one’s house, how basic electronic works or with some more effort even the basics of how a computer works. It doesn’t require that much effort or education – probably only a good secondary eduction and/or appreticeship – would provide in order to understand how these things work.
Instead I have had to endure managers and other people throughout my career babbling on about buzzwords and technologies they have no idea about and seem to believe are the solutions to their problems, when it reality they are nothing of the sort. Some basic level of technical and scientfiic knowhow would make these scams less likely.
Note how in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centiry investment scams in the UK were all about houses in Flordia, mysterious South Sea Islands, recently discovered colonial territory like the Mississippi bubble or (in the London stock market) railways being constructed in South America. These scams thrive on ignorance.

Mike Smith
Mike Smith
2 years ago

The latest snake oil is the ‘NoCode’ fad peddled to the clueless managerial class i.e. mostly arts graduates with no managerial qualifications. What they don’t realise is that the coding bit is simple, deciding what you want to do with the code is the tricky bit!

Douglas McNeish
Douglas McNeish
2 years ago

Those who put Kamala Harris into office were also buying a dream.

Ian nclfuzzy
Ian nclfuzzy
2 years ago

Vanity Fair for the Digital Age.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
2 years ago

If Elizabeth Holmes hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent her — and in some ways, we did.” Unlike Spanx, Holmes high tech wonder failed despite an awful lot of other people’s money (not hers). Her stellar ability to act makes her one of the best conwomen in history. As a sociopath she ranks well with the train of money death behind her, at least not people except for bruised egos.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago

Do not pass go, go directly to jail.

alan Osband
alan Osband
2 years ago

She has invented a patent jail avoidance device , a miniaturised version of herself . Allegedly

Jesse Porter
Jesse Porter
2 years ago

Entertaining, but the same kind pf hustle that Elizabeth Holmes represents. Nearly all grifters have beauty, charm and lying skills. Hilary lacked beauty and charm, but was a consummate liar. Her husband could lie with the best but only had the looks and charm to attract women and men who were attracted to men. Nixon was like Hilary, all liar and no looks or charm. The successful liar is one who can fool nearly everyone. That was Holmes lacked, she could only convince other liars and manipulators.
The one great weakness of grifters is their gullibility, especially towards their own lies. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Chaves, Castro, both Roosevelts, virtually all politicians and great men and women in every field, especially in acting, have that weakness in abundance. Another is deep-seated pathology particularly toward their victims.

Marek Nowicki
Marek Nowicki
2 years ago

Several years ago I was asked by investors for the opinion about her technology. My answer was: this technology is badly needed but we don’t know if it exists. Without independent side by side comparison etc this is just writing on the paper and paper is very patient.

Last edited 2 years ago by Marek Nowicki