Back in 2014, American entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso popularised the word “girl boss”. Adding a hashtag prefix, she sent it rocketing into public consciousness as the title of her autobiography, a bestseller that later became a TV series, and that described her transformation of an eBay vintage store into the multi-million-dollar fashion brand that is Nasty Gal. That name was borrowed from a 1975 Betty Davis album, but with “girl boss” she signalled a defiantly female rebellion against the likes of ’80s power dressing trends (what were shoulder pads if not an attempt to give a woman a more masculine silhouette?). As a rallying cry for a generation of young women who might not otherwise have thought to start their own businesses, #girlboss bore countless hopes, dreams and gleefully hard-nosed aspirations out into the ether.

Still, language is nothing if not fluid, and neologisms like “girl boss” are no exception. Fast-forward a mere half dozen years and this particular formulation looks to have evolved into just another linguistic tool of oppression, doing the very opposite of what it was intended for: denigrating rather than celebrating, patronising rather than promoting. At least, that’s what a recent ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) suggests.

Using freshly minted powers, the UK watchdog earlier this month banned an advert for PeoplePerHour, an online platform that connects freelancers with businesses. The ad, which appeared widely across the London Underground network at the end of last year, showed a red-haired young woman looking smilingly down at something off-camera, presumably her laptop. Or maybe she was just semaphoring coy feminine compliance, because the words that accompanied the image were the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head: “You do the girl boss thing we’ll do the SEO thing”. After all, what girl – or grown woman even – is capable of grappling with technology like search engine optimisation?