Hi, its Olivia, and today I have a book review
for Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis.
This is a book that I continuously see on
the bestsellers lists in the self-help genre,
and I was also reading it for a side project.But
getting right to it, this book was not for
me. It didn't speak to me, clearly there are
people who like it, but not me- I didn't like
this book. I think overall it was because
there was no new ideas, um, and it came off
really narrow-minded. And perhaps the biggest
thing is that, I'm sure it was supposed to
be inspiring and empowering, but for me by
the time I finished it, I felt less moved
than a rock. I felt very uninspired. It can
be awkward to rate a book like this low, because
when the author is telling their personal
experiences, or if it's a memoir or something,
it can feel like you are rating their personal
experience low. But that's not it- it's how
they take their experiences and turn it into
advice, and the message they are giving in
their book.I just didn't like this one. Obviously,
most of my thoughts for this book are negative,
but I do have a few positives that I'll put
at the end so we can end on a positive note.
The first thing I want to talk about is how
it was repetitive, and it also lacked depth-
it felt very, like, surface level. And basically
the gist of the- what she's saying for the
whole book is that you are in control of your
life. If you want to change something in your
life, you need to just do it. If you have
a problem, just do it. I had this problem,
and the solution was that I just did it. And
there was honestly nothing groundbreaking
about anything that she said, even though
she made it seem like these big revelations.
It came off a like watered down Pinterest
quotes, you know?Like, I've seen it before,
and I've even seen people claiming that she
plagiarized a lot of the words, which, I wouldn't
have a hard time believing because it feels
like you've read this stuff before. But also,
she has a habit of contradicting herself.
So the way the book is structured is ever
chapter starts out with a lie, and through
a story or something, she explains how that
lie is a lie- not true. And then she ends
with, um, some advice or tips. These were
some of the tips that she provided. One of
them was 'Keeping my goals in plain sight.'
Cool. 'Starting with one small goal.' Cool.
'Setting goals, not time limits.' Cool. I
get it, goals. and then a couple of chapters
later, she's talking about goals, again. And
she's talking about having visual picture
goals in her closet and one of them is this,
"the second is a picture of a vacation home
in Hawaii. Both have been on my wish list
for years. The house in particular feels extremely-
feels extra dreamy but hard to achieve. My
goal is to own it by the time I'm forty. So
I've got five years." What happened to not
having time limits? It was a lot of things
like that that kept coming up. And the next
biggest problem that I have was that it was
very tone deaf. There was a lot of things
that she was preaching and highlighting that
just showed to me that she wasn't recognizing
her privilege. Even though she makes a point
of calling out her privilege in one chapter,
Imma talk about that chapter in a little bit
because- um, hm. She also seems to try too
hard in my opinion to try and sound relatable-
she'll say 'girl,' 'sister,' 'yo', you need
your 'tribe' of women, you need to find your
'tribe'- things like that that just came off
cringey to me. Also something she mentioned
was that her son called out that she was not
like other moms. That- she pulls the I'm not
like other girls often. But the reason why
she said that she's not like other moms is
because of how much she works and this is
what she had to say, "because of that, I made
a special effort to volunteer in his classroom
every other week. But that wasn't right either,
because even though I sat in the teeny tiny
chairs cutting papers and stuffing homework
folders like other volunteers, I wasn't in
jeans or yoga pants. I was in high heels and
a white blazer that I should have known better
than to wear on the day they were making teepees
out of brown modeling clay." Oh my goodness,
the chapter on body image and exercising and
dieting. There's a lot of underlying assumptions
and judgement that she has, but it's disguised
as I'm just telling it how it is. That's kind
of her vibe that she gives off, like, everyone
else is gonna sugar coat it, but Imma tell
you how it is. There wasn't a single source
or, uh, any bit of research to back up anything
that she said- she was kind of just pulling
things out of nowhere and saying this is fact
regarding exercising and dieting. Then she
would say things like this "I believe your
Creator delights in the intricacies of you,
and he is filled with joy when you live out
your potential. I also believe that humans
were not meant to be out of shape and severely
overweight." And there's a lot fo comments
throughout the book about, like, somebody
having a piece of cake and it's shameful or
something like that, and it's just weird.
Also, even though I had never heard of her
before reading this, she is a successful entrepreneur
or businesswoman, she has, like, her own company
and there's nothing wrong with being a proud
successful woman. But after repeating the
same thing, like, five times in a kind of
self-serving way, it becomes just obnoxious
honestly. It started to feel very unneeded.
And another problem I had was the choice in
stories that she used to explain a message.
Honestly, it seemed to be like such a stretch
some of these things, like, why? You're really
using this story to talk about this idea?
She talked- she started a chapter out about
how she shaves her toes and how she was like,
yes, I know, I shave my toes. And, believe
or not, I bullied a girl once for shaving
her toes, and now I do the same thing. And
I was just like, why am I reading this? And
I get the intentions that she hide behind
so many of these things, but it just really
wasn't written well for me. I also mentioned
there was a chapter where she acknowledged
her privilege. In this chapter she mentioned
how it wasn't until basically junior high
that she went to Disneyland that she got her
first experience with people who didn't look
like her. Um, like a more diverse environment-
she saw, um, she saw two men holding hands
or she say other people of color and it ends
up turning into a big ole chapter of you need
to make sure you hang out with those people.
She even says, "One of my best friends is"-
can- can you guess where this is going? Can
you guess? She says "One of my best friends
is gay, African-American, and Mexican American."
And, she goes on to talk about how that friend-
I believe it's the same friend- has become
a type of teacher for her that always listens
to her questions that she has. And that's
just a side thing that I personally really
don't like- is like having, um, having people
serve as your teacher instead of just educating
yourself. Um, I- I- I'm not going to get into
that. And the last thing I'll talk about is
the title itself. I did not understand why
it was called Girl, Wash Your Face- and that's
not the whole title. The whole title is very
long and it says "Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop
believing the lies about who you are so you
can become who you were meant to be." But
the Girl, Wash Your Face piece- you don't
understand why it says that until the very
last chapter- the very last paragraph. And
it just really didn't sum up the book. That's
it for the negatives, I said I was gonna end
on positives. So I'll start with her honesty.
I appreciate how honest and transparent she
was about her experiences. Especially, she
had a very traumatic family death in her immediate
family when she was younger and she was open
about that, and also her experiences with
the fostering and adopting system. And those
were very small parts of the book, obviously
what I've been talking about has nothing to
do really with those subjects, but, I appreciated
them. And also, I did like how she was talking
about how she was trying to get a book published
once- a separate novel- and she wanted to
maintain the integrity of the story. She is
a Christian girl and she didn't want her protagonist
to be, um, written differently because the
publisher was saying that it needed- like,
the character needed to be written differently.
And I appreciated what she had to say about
that and standing her grounds, so that was
neat. And it's a short, quick read. So, that's-
that's, um, that's where I'm going to end
off here. I don't know how long I've been
talking, sorry if it was too long. If you're
still here, thank you for watching. I will
see you in another video, bye.
