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Rachel Hollis' Instagram is The Bad Place

 Women, mothers, pull up a chair. 


I wish to have a word with you about Rachel Hollis, toxic positivity, and women as a commodity. 


Do you know Rachel Hollis? She is a self proclaimed motivational speaker and life coach. She has nearly 2 million followers on Instagram, has published multiple NY Times bestsellers, and runs her own business, has a product line in Target, a clothing line on QVC, her own fitness app, and sells out large convention size stadiums where people pay $40 for a general ticket or up to $200 per person for a VIP pass that will give them things like “digital swag” (those two words together form a new one that has an unclear meaning to me), and video playback on all speakers. Rachel Hollis is a business and the thing that she is selling? Why that’s you.


It wasn’t always this way. As one of the few bloggers still kicking around that started out nearly nine years ago, many of us old folks can tell you how quickly the landscape of personal essays and blogging changed. At first, they were quaint and relatable. Many of the women I read were women and mothers just like me. Their lives were richer and more complex than the whitewashed stories of parenthood that many of us had been fed. We struggled, we poured our hearts out to each other. It was a legitimate community. 


Rachel Hollis started out around then too. Her earliest Instagram posts looked this and honestly, I could relate:





Over time, she began to carve out a range of different online personas. She was a party planner, and a chef suddenly with a cookbook. Rachel Hollis was a food blogger until she wrote a series of fictional romance books. Suddenly her online self shifted again. She was about love and glitter. But it wasn’t until early 2015 when she posted a picture of herself on Instagram in a bikini, and talked about her stretch marks and their beauty and how grateful she was to them and to her stretched body. The post took on a life of its own. Rachel Hollis was everywhere talking about body shaming and women loving themselves and again she shifted, smartly so. What women wanted was to feel accepted. She had found the lightning in the bottle. This was where the money was. She could convince women and mothers that she was them, she understood their struggles to accept themselves and love themselves. But then also sell them something. She began to tell her growing followers that amidst all this self love, they were in fact made for more. The implicit statement in saying that someone is made for more, is that a) they are currently not enough, and that b) women must be made for something. That their mere existence as a thinking, loving sentient being was simply not enough. They must have an action plan, a to do list. They must live in a beast mode of constant progress and also constant joy. If they aren't succeeding, if they aren’t happy, it’s because they aren’t choosing it enough or working hard enough.







Can you just imagine mama bear, if someone actually said this crap to one of our kids? You would quite correctly rip them a new one. You would tell that person that our beloved children are fine exactly as they are. That we don’t love them because of what they accomplish or how hard they push themselves. We love them. Period. End of sentence. So why on God’s green earth are we letting someone talk to us this way?


But there isn’t much money to be made in the proposition of telling people that it is perfectly okay to not be an expert at something, to not have run that latest marathon or accomplished the cross fit class. We have to keep pushing. Always. Women are never allowed to rest. EVER. Because there are people out there like Rachel Hollis getting rich off the idea that she can whisper in our ear to get up, always. Keep choosing relentless happiness. If it all isn’t working, that’s on you. She hints and often states outright that as you are is exactly not enough. And then sells you something that she says will lead you to a place you will never ever reach. Because her brand is not about helping you achieve a goal. It is about making you feel constantly hollow so that you will seek out her and her products and her speakers and her books. If you give her enough money then you can find happiness. You need to do more. You need to hustle harder. The happiness and success is almost always there, but just not quite. We are almost always just not exactly where we need to be. It’s a toxic message, and deeply injurious to the emotional well being of women.







As a longtime not at all even remotely successful blogger, those who were there in 2012 and 2013 know who stayed true and know who changed to go where the money was. And I want to be clear and say that I don’t fault people for changing. None of us are who we were nine years ago. That’s the natural evolution of things. And I also don’t fault her for the “hustle” or evolving to go where the money was. We would never fault a man for that and I don’t fault her. But I do fault her for consistently selling the product and the general brand of women needing to do more and choose more. Because maybe you just worked an 18 hour shift at the hospital and you come home to dirty dishes or a crying baby, or your first grader who will be up in two hours and need to be homeschooled. Imagine that woman taking her first mental break of the day on Instagram only to be assaulted by the message that if she isn’t happy it’s because she just hasn’t worked hard enough. She whispers again and again to all of us, you haven’t achieved your dreams yet solely because you don’t want to. That’s on you. 

Blech. 


There are infinite reasons why you should stop giving this particular person and her brand and other self help people out there your money. Please, please stop buying these products. Stop lining her pockets with our own insecurities. We are enough. Regardless of what we look like, or achieve or do. But if all of that isn’t enough, there’s also this:


She supports fraudster and known harasser Tony Robbins.

She is a devout Tony Robbins disciple. Robbins is a professional huckster who is the world’s oldest traveling carnival barker. He’s been telling people for years that they are weak, and not enough. That they need his products to get back up on their feet. He’s also been accused of widespread sexual harassment and mistreatment of women. No one who aligns with this man is looking to empower women.





She steals content.

This one has been known for years. She regularly steals content for her social media feed. What is most pernicious about this particular theft is that she continues to often steal from lesser known bloggers without giving them credit for their work. She could lift them up. She could give them a boost. She doesn’t. Occasionally she steals more brazenly from people way out of her league. Here she steals from Glennon Doyle by changing Glennon’s famous “We can do hard things” quote to “You can do hard things.” It’s petty theft at its most petty.





She is a consistent cultural appropriation offender, and regularly denigrates the BIPOC population. 

Last year, she got in hot water for putting “Still I rise,” on her Insta and attributing this quote to RACHEL HOLLIS and not Maya Angelou. This week, she made headlines for referring to her cleaning lady as “the woman who cleans toilets.” When commenters  attempted to explain how insensitive and diminishing it was to describe her housekeeper that way and to work a bit harder to acknowledge her privilege, she doubled down saying she was privileged and it was because she works twice as hard as everyone else. Who else would work as hard as Rachel or get up at 4AM like Rachel? If that makes her unrelatable so be it. Relatable was never her goal (which is utterly hilarious because 2012 Rachel and 2015 Rachel would like a word). But when BIPOC commenters again tried to tell her how utterly tone deaf her post was her social media team began actively deleting their comments. She also compared herself to Oprah and Malala and Harriet Tubman as another unrelatable groundbreaking pioneer. This is a thing that actually happened.







She regularly throws her own team under the bus.

But when she gets in hot water for these posts, her go to line as it was during the Maya Angelou kerfuffle is to blame the women that work for her. They made the post, or they told her to take 4 days before responding to the comments of women so hurt by her words. It really wasn’t Rachel’s fault anyhow. It was their fault. She lacks all accountability while she builds a veritable empire on the backs of women by telling them that they aren’t accountable enough.




This last social media debacle to be honest is the most refreshing because for once Hollis tells us exactly what she thinks of women. They can’t relate to her because they don’t put in the time she does. They can’t relate because they don’t know her level of success and they will never work hard enough to experience it. I expect when it comes to understanding what it means to do hard work, the woman who cleans Rachel’s toilets would like a word.


Anyhow, just look at this stuff she is filling up our minds and timelines with. Look at it? Don’t you see what she is selling? She is selling you some fictional version of a woman who will never ever get off that treadmill. The person, the dream, the body, the life she wants will forever be out of reach. And if and when it all remains just out of reach, she will have no one to blame but herself. And if she feels sad about that or about anything else, this too is her fault. She just didn’t choose happiness hard enough.








So please, please unfollow this woman. Stop buying her stuff. Tell your friends. When you do, you will send a message to the publishing houses, Target, and QVC and the wannabe hucksters lurking to get in on this grift, that women and their hearts are precious and wild exactly as they are. And they most certainly are not for sale.



Comments

  1. Such an important post. Thank you for writing it.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and share Jena.

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  2. Will definitely share this one, thank you.



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  3. THANK YOU for writing this!!

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  4. The stupidity of “Do more than just breathe” would be funny if people didn’t actually get sucked into this madness. But it’s horrifying. Thank you for this important post, will share. Would it be possible to make the screenshots bigger, or higher resolution? When I zoom in on them, I’m not able to read the text below the images. Then again maybe it’s better if I can’t because she makes me soooooo angry.....

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  5. Great article. It is so easy to buy into the 'not enoughness' that pervades our lives and social media feeds. It is easy to see how the endless journey of self-development has no real end until you stop believing you are a person that needs to be more developed.

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. Glad I don't follow this Rachel H. , ugh. I will share this important post in case of those who follow me, follow her. Oh, and thank you for confirming my suspicions about T.R.

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  8. How about the giant red flag of marrying her emotional abusive boyfriend and holding marriage retreats even though they were disgustingly condescending to each other? Or telling women to love their bodies but she got a boob job and was so embarrassed that the hot plastic surgeon was going to see her naked?

    I'm embarrassed that I bought her books based on recommendations from friends.

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  9. I was absolutely furious when she told the story of the woman who was sad and crying about her divorce and 'lost it' in front of her adult daughter. This woman was in deep pain and Rachel told her that she was to NEVER have an emotional breakdown in front of her children no matter their age. I thought that was very harmful.

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  10. I feel this 100%. I also started blogging around the same time (2013), and agree the space was (or seemed) more honest and real. I think there are many of us out there who try to be that way, and hopefully that will be what lasts in the end. Appreciate this post.

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  11. I've felt this way for a while about her... hard to put in words, but you did. thanks!

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  12. Hi My name is Rebecca.i just want to share my experience with the world on how i got my love back and saved my marriage… I was married for 7 years with 4 kids and we lived happily until things started getting ugly and we had a fights and arguments almost every time… it got worse at a point that he filed for divorce… I tried my best to make him change his mind & stay with me cause i loved him with all my heart and didn’t want to loose him but everything just didn’t work out… he moved out of the house and still went ahead to file for divorce… I pleaded and tried everything but still nothing worked. The breakthrough came when someone introduced me to this wonderful, great spell caster Dr Zuma, who eventually helped me out… I have never been a fan of things like this but just decided to try reluctantly cause I was desperate and left with no choice… He did special prayers and cast a love spell on him. Within 24hours he called me and was sorry for all the emotional trauma he had cost me, moved back to the house and we continue to live happily, the kids are happy too and we are expecting our fourth child… I have introduced him to a lot of couples with problems across the world and they have had good news… Just thought I should share my experience cause I strongly believe someone out there needs it… You can contact him on spiritualherbalisthealing@gmail.com whatsapp +15068001647

    ReplyDelete

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