Maintenance Phase - Rachel Hollis Part 1： Hashtag Relatable

00:00:00.000 welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that isn't going to tell you anything about your

00:00:15.380 skincare routine girl leave your face dirty i'm aubrey gordon i am michael hubbs if you would

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00:00:49.680 Aubrey Gordon, what are we talking about today? My understanding is that we're talking about

00:00:53.920 rachel hollis who is a like a person's name that i know okay i know the title format of rachel

00:01:03.160 hollis's books that is like girl wash your face or girl what i don't even know what the but they

00:01:09.400 all start with girl yes pronoun comma directive yes girl wash your face and girl stop apologizing

00:01:16.260 and i don't really know more than that i feel like there was this point in time where it was like are

00:01:20.360 you gonna pay attention to rachel hollis or are you gonna pay attention to caroline calloway

00:01:24.880 And you chose your path.

00:01:26.620 And I chose my path and I stuck to it.

00:01:28.700 I mean, one of the things that I learned doing the research for this episode is that there

00:01:31.960 are two kinds of people in the world, people who have never heard of Rachel Hollis and

00:01:35.980 people who are obsessed with Rachel Hollis.

00:01:38.900 And like, I went from one category to the other, and I am extremely excited about taking

00:01:45.020 you along with me and describing to you why people cannot stop thinking about this person

00:01:50.920 as soon as they learn anything about her.

00:01:52.860 Yeah, let's dive in. 0.96

00:01:53.900 I should say before we get going that this episode involves some suicide stuff. 0.99

00:01:57.880 Oh, shit. 0.98

00:01:58.260 So if that's going to suck for you, I would recommend skipping like the first 15 minutes, probably. 1.00

00:02:03.180 Got it.

00:02:03.580 So we are going to start with a freeze frame needle scratch.

00:02:09.220 I'll bet you're wondering how I got into this situation.

00:02:12.800 So in 2021, Rachel Hollis is a motivational guru, lifestyle influencer, choose your term.

00:02:20.660 she has 1.6 million followers on instagram her book girl wash your face was the second most

00:02:27.980 popular book of 2018 on amazon what yeah it was a massive sensation she has a line of products on

00:02:34.560 qvc she does sponsorships for target she was of course a speaker on oprah's 2020 vision

00:02:42.560 your life in focus to her yeah this show is basically just us going through like the lineup

00:02:47.680 of that event and talking about them like one by one at this point she has a conference tour called

00:02:53.800 rise that goes around the country and it often sells out in minutes and these are like large

00:02:58.260 stadiums and some of the tickets for these events cost 1800 dollars each this also sounds like some

00:03:03.800 real uh it feels like it's swimming in the same kind of waters as like mega church stuff this is

00:03:09.000 actually what got me interested in doing this episode her core audience is christian women

00:03:15.420 her book mostly sold through word of mouth which is itself interesting that it becomes that big of

00:03:19.500 a bestseller and it's mostly selling in the south and the midwest the washington post calls her

00:03:25.540 books goop for red state women as you're describing this it feels like a really unique amalgam of this

00:03:33.060 kind of like 90s self-help guru plus 2000s the secret yeah plus 2010s and 2020s like social

00:03:44.660 media influencer culture totally yes without really knowing where we're going with this

00:03:48.880 i'm just like oh those are three factors that i dislike individually her her core message it is

00:03:56.580 i mean we're actually not going to dwell on it that much just because it's such standard

00:03:59.920 motivational guru language it's basically you are the one holding yourself back you've got to have

00:04:05.800 more belief in yourself the only point in her book where she actually mentions the phrase

00:04:12.140 girl wash your face is in the final paragraph it says girl get a hold of your life stop medicating

00:04:19.800 stop hiding out stop being afraid stop giving away pieces of yourself stop saying you can't do it

00:04:25.740 stop the negative self-talk stop abusing your body stop putting it off for tomorrow or monday

00:04:30.960 or next year rise up from where you've been scrub away the tears and the pain of yesterday and start

00:04:36.320 again girl wash your face it's really interesting to hear this in the framework of goop for red

00:04:45.660 state women because it's feeding a couple of things here right one is like you're the master

00:04:50.880 of your own destiny but the flip side of that is anybody who's not doing that isn't taking charge 0.99

00:04:57.600 of their own life and they really only have themselves to blame right like it leads to this

00:05:02.260 kind of like critique of like quote unquote victim culture that is like leveled at anybody

00:05:07.360 who wants to talk about like racism or poverty or like larger forces than just like hey pick

00:05:13.520 yourself up dust yourself off bootstraps i mean we're gonna we're gonna get into like the deep

00:05:19.340 woof of like everything that she's ever written or done but for our purposes now i'm gonna send

00:05:25.720 you a clip. In April 2021, she uploads a TikTok that implodes the entire thing. And so I'm going

00:05:34.800 to send you the TikTok. Doing a live stream. And I mentioned that there's a sweet woman who comes

00:05:39.880 to my house twice a week and cleans. She's my house cleaner. She cleans the toilets. Someone 1.00

00:05:45.320 commented and said, you are privileged AF. And I was like, you're right. I'm super freaking

00:05:51.380 privilege, but also I worked my ass off to have the money to have someone come twice a week and

00:05:57.000 clean my toilets. And I told her that. And then she said, well, you're unrelatable.

00:06:04.920 What is it about me that made you think I want to be relatable? No, sis, literally everything I do

00:06:12.880 in my life is to live a life that most people can't relate to. Most people won't work this hard.

00:06:18.960 Most people won't get up at 4 a.m.

00:06:21.180 Most people won't fail publicly again and again just to reach the top of the mountain. 1.00

00:06:26.360 Literally every woman I admire in history was unrelatable.

00:06:30.160 If my life is relatable to most people, I'm doing it wrong.

00:06:34.960 Oh, no.

00:06:37.440 Even by the standards of a lifestyle influencer, it's like one of the most tone deaf things I've ever heard in my life. 0.98

00:06:44.680 boy oh fucking boy it is a it is a unique opportunity to just watch someone take a 0.98

00:06:50.060 fucking swan dive i showed it to my boyfriend and he was like is this a deep fake 0.99

00:06:54.700 why would anyone put this on the internet themselves but then tell me about the content 0.98

00:07:01.200 what what are your reactions to what she actually said uh okay so when we used to do debriefs of 0.99

00:07:06.240 like canvases we would do worst weirdest and best okay worst thing about that fucking video 0.99

00:07:12.420 is all of this shit about like i worked for it hate it i know weirdest is cleaning your toilets 0.99

00:07:20.540 twice a week seems like a lot of toilet cleaning i know and also i'm not wild about describing 0.99

00:07:27.120 somebody who cleans your house as like she cleans my toilets like i have had various jobs where i've

00:07:32.460 had to clean toilets and if somebody reduced the job to like this is mike he cleans the toilets

00:07:36.820 like it's such a belittling way to talk about somebody else yeah you literally found the one

00:07:41.760 part of their job that's related to human excrement exactly cool what a respectful and

00:07:46.300 wonderful way to talk about someone who's in your home i know spending a bunch of time with your

00:07:50.080 kids with your family doing a bunch of work to take care of you it's also one of the things that 0.81

00:07:55.540 like many of the women of color in the replies point out is that she's juxtaposing her like 1.00

00:08:02.060 very open contempt of the woman who cleans her house with this like rise and grind thing of like 0.99

00:08:06.880 I get up at 4am. And it's like, do you know who gets up at 4am in America? It's like low wage

00:08:12.700 workers, many of whom like clean your house and clean hotel rooms. You might get up at four in

00:08:17.980 the morning to do Pilates or something. But a lot of people get up early because they can't afford

00:08:23.100 a car and they are priced out of big cities and they have a three hour commute. Or they work the

00:08:28.200 fucking swing shift. Yes. And that's when they're at work. So it's like you're glorifying like I get 1.00

00:08:32.980 up at four while you're also denigrating people who probably get up at four like fuck you and then 0.99

00:08:39.420 the other thing that i wondered about is she said something about like all the women i've admired 0.99

00:08:43.300 throughout history are unrelatable and i was like i would be fascinated by which i mean probably a

00:08:49.620 little bit horrified to see a list of like who are the women that rachel hollis admires throughout

00:08:53.940 history oh my god what i cannot believe you are saying this okay i was deliberately keeping an

00:09:00.800 aspect of this clip from you oh no what when you post things on tiktok you also put a caption

00:09:06.420 so when she says all of the women i've admired in history are unrelatable think of like who are 0.97

00:09:14.040 the most offensive people who she could compare herself to in the caption of this tiktok i mean 1.00

00:09:20.500 it's it's gonna be like sojourner truth or something or like harriet tubman oh my god 0.95

00:09:26.880 it's literally harriet tubman god fucking damn it she mentions like frida kahlo and amelia erhart 0.83

00:09:35.940 and like malala it's a parade of people who have no business being in the caption of a video like 0.98

00:09:43.380 this posted by a woman like this malala how did i miss malala i know dude fucking course i was 0.91

00:09:51.220 gonna save this for a twist but like you totally sussed it out it's like the worst thing you can 0.95

00:09:55.780 imagine. I just look, if you're talking about someone who's like, I worked for everything I

00:10:01.440 have. To me, that often indicates someone who has not done much or any reflecting on the role of

00:10:07.920 race and racism, much less poverty, much less anything else, right? If she had not specifically

00:10:13.120 said women, I would have been like Dr. King. Yeah, I know. She gonna say Dr. King. So we're

00:10:18.160 gonna sort of hit pause on this particular tech talk, and we're going to return to it.

00:10:22.100 This is the, you might be wondering how I got here.

00:10:24.400 Yes.

00:10:24.800 We're putting the TikTok in a little Jurassic Park piece of amber.

00:10:28.100 We're going to sort of unpause it when we circle back to it after we get all of the backstory.

00:10:32.980 Great.

00:10:33.460 I'm in.

00:10:33.980 So I'm rewinding us to January 9th, 1983, when Rachel Hollis is born in a place called

00:10:40.520 Weed Patch, California, which is a suburb of Bakersfield, California.

00:10:44.540 It's like 90 minutes outside of LA.

00:10:46.380 Sure.

00:10:46.820 This is the part of the story where like Rachel is the most sympathetic, especially to me

00:10:51.140 because i am also a preacher's kid she has a big family she has three sisters and her brother

00:10:56.340 she describes growing up in an extremely sheltered childhood which again totally reminded me of mine

00:11:03.700 so she says my father was a pentecostal minister and if any of you were raised pentecostal you have

00:11:08.800 some idea of what that means suffice it to say halloween was considered the devil's holiday and

00:11:13.500 we couldn't take any part in it we also weren't allowed to listen to secular music which means

00:11:17.360 anything other than christian radio or be cheerleaders i'm still deeply upset because i

00:11:21.720 would have made one heck of a cheering section or watch any movies above pg it seems like she

00:11:27.000 really absorbed these rules she talks about going to a friend's house for a sleepover and they watch

00:11:31.600 the bodyguard which is the first r-rated movie she's ever watched i think she's like 13 or 14

00:11:36.480 at this point and she feels when she comes home that her mom can like tell that she's broken this

00:11:41.600 rule and so she immediately confesses her mom's like how was it she's like i watched a movie i

00:11:45.880 shouldn't have and it sounds like someone who's like genuinely like trying to do right by her

00:11:49.920 parents and her parents expectations yeah i mean she seems like a well-behaved kid yeah she also

00:11:54.920 admits to her credit that she grew up in a really sheltered environment so when she's in eighth

00:12:00.100 grade she goes to disneyland and she talks about like seeing other races for the first time and

00:12:04.940 like interracial families and she sees two guys kissing each other and holding hands like in line

00:12:10.900 for the Matterhorn. And she says, you know, at the time, she was like looking at people like

00:12:15.820 she was in a zoo, like she had never seen this before.

00:12:19.140 So as you're talking about these places, my dad grew up in Banning, California,

00:12:22.560 which is similarly like, you know, an hour, hour and a half outside of LA,

00:12:28.760 economically depressed small town. It would take some work not to see people of color.

00:12:35.800 That is an impressive sort of feat. 1.00

00:12:38.780 This is also something that resonated with me because she's very vague about the details of growing up.

00:12:43.780 So I'm not sure if she went to a religious school or something.

00:12:46.460 But being part of a church, especially when your dad is the minister, like that is your entire social life.

00:12:51.740 There you go.

00:12:52.180 And, you know, the famous cliche is that like the most segregated hour in America is Sunday morning at 10 a.m.

00:12:57.400 It's actually quite easy, even in diverse communities.

00:13:00.380 If you're if so much of your life revolves around the church and the church has those demographics, you're going to be seeing those people, but you're not going to be like meaningfully interacting with other groups.

00:13:08.500 Yeah, that's interesting. I grew up, like, hard agnostic.

00:13:12.200 Oh, yeah.

00:13:12.560 We don't know, and there's no way to know, and we're leaving it at that.

00:13:17.540 Your dad is Bill Nye.

00:13:21.160 She also talks about how her parents are, like, fighting all the time. They eventually end up getting divorced. You know, there's four kids, and the parents aren't getting along very well.

00:13:30.220 She says this in a speech later, but I think this encapsulates so much of what will emerge later in her personality.

00:13:35.960 She says, you know, growing up in a home where you're kind of fighting to get attention.

00:13:40.080 Later, she says, what this does to a little girl is it teaches her that the only way she

00:13:45.000 can be loved is if she keeps producing.

00:13:47.340 If she wants to get noticed by her parents, she has to win the science fair.

00:13:50.940 She has to be the best singer in choir.

00:13:52.840 She has to be the best at sports.

00:13:54.420 It's really only these sort of external markers of achievement that her parents know how to

00:13:59.880 notice as something that she has done well.

00:14:02.560 Oh, that's rough.

00:14:03.260 So the big event that happens in her childhood is when she's 14, her brother kills himself.

00:14:09.140 Oh, God.

00:14:09.760 And Rachel discovers his body.

00:14:12.080 Oh, my God.

00:14:12.960 I know. She's 14. He's 16. This is from her first book. She says,

00:14:17.500 My parents never parented me again. I have had more conversations with my 11-year-old about

00:14:22.420 Fortnite than either of my parents have ever had with me about anything I saw that day or

00:14:27.320 the grief I felt or how scared I was in the 23 years since.

00:14:30.600 It sounds like from that time on, her house is just like this silent, ghoulish nightmare.

00:14:38.060 Everyone's dealing with the grief in their own way and acting out in these like really

00:14:41.540 sort of understandably unproductive ways, but like not really processing or talking

00:14:46.800 about what actually happened.

00:14:48.140 That seems really awful and like a lot for everybody to hold.

00:14:52.280 We could do a whole episode on toxic positivity in organized religion.

00:14:57.040 This is something that I have seen.

00:14:58.320 this is something that many other people can speak to it's a thing of like if you're acknowledging

00:15:03.660 what happened it's like you're dwelling on it and you're thinking about the past

00:15:07.880 and the whole thing is you're supposed to move past it but the problem is that doesn't actually

00:15:12.300 allow you to feel anything and that doesn't allow you to form intimacy with other people

00:15:17.160 the only people in the world who understand what you're going through you can't actually find

00:15:21.880 communion with them yeah that's so tough so she responds to this by essentially counting the days

00:15:27.020 until she can leave she talks in her book of like i knew i had to get through like three more

00:15:31.400 birthdays and four more christmases and then i was out of there wow yikes she says as soon as this 1.00

00:15:35.940 happens she gets on some sort of fast track in high school so she can graduate a year early 1.00

00:15:40.620 and she graduates at 17 and she fucking leaves like she's done i mean honestly good for her 0.89

00:15:47.100 oh yeah is she someone who ever talks about availing herself of any kind of like mental 0.95

00:15:51.860 health support or treatment it's interesting she talks a lot about that actually oh good like one

00:15:56.080 of the parts of her platform that i wholeheartedly get behind is she's like we need to normalize

00:16:00.760 going to therapy there's nothing wrong with going to therapy i've been in therapy for years it helped

00:16:04.620 me deal with my trauma it helped me deal with my upbringing and like if you're feeling stuff

00:16:08.700 you should probably consider therapy that's great yes and i want to pause here because i think

00:16:12.740 we're gonna talk and maybe we already have about like rachel at her worst but i also think that

00:16:17.700 like this this is rachel at her best and i i should say before we get into sort of the problematic

00:16:23.000 content of her books etc that like she's an extremely gifted writer and like an unbelievably

00:16:28.140 good public speaker she's really charismatic like you watch one of her talks and you're like i

00:16:33.440 totally get why people listen to every single thing that this woman has to say so i want to

00:16:39.720 send you an excerpt from one of her early blog posts where she's talking about her brother and

00:16:44.620 sort of processing grief and i think this like really encapsulates like why she's a compelling

00:16:50.880 and likable writer and speaker.

00:16:53.300 Okay, am I reading?

00:16:54.880 Let's do it.

00:16:55.420 Go for it.

00:16:55.840 Okay.

00:16:56.180 As I write this, it strikes me that he's been gone for 17 years, which means that he's been

00:17:01.660 gone for as long as he was here with us.

00:17:04.180 You never truly recover from the loss of someone you love, but time passes and stretches out

00:17:08.740 and it doesn't hurt as badly as it used to.

00:17:11.560 You can manage a minute, then an hour, and then whole days without remembering what's

00:17:16.020 missing.

00:17:16.860 And then you realize how long it's been.

00:17:18.460 you realize that next year he'll have been gone longer than he was here

00:17:21.860 that thought slams into you and just like the day he died you lose your breath and you're not sure

00:17:27.840 how you'll catch it again she's a good writer she's a really good writer and all of that is

00:17:31.960 really real and true about grief really real and true really really real and true she's writing

00:17:36.640 this in the sort of early 2010s on her blog and this is before she becomes a motivational guru

00:17:41.840 and what she does is oftentimes when she tells stories in her books she'll tell an anecdote

00:17:47.080 like this and then she'll immediately switch and turn it into universal advice she'll be like and

00:17:52.560 that's why you should always remember who you love or like that's why we should always keep

00:17:58.520 close the people close to us or something i'm just imagining the guy from arrested development

00:18:03.840 and that's why you always leave a note her career has a very like that's why you always leave a note

00:18:09.660 kind of vibe like these little like pat lessons at the ends of these stories sometimes even when

00:18:14.920 they don't really fit all that well. And I think what makes this passage strong is that she's not

00:18:20.000 trying to make it relatable. She's not trying to relate it to me. And I can't relate to something

00:18:26.000 like this. I really can't imagine what it's like to go through what she went through. And that's

00:18:30.720 fine. She's just telling a story and she's expressing what it feels like to her. And that's

00:18:35.280 it. This is sort of like where I wish that she had stayed. There's a real nugget of truth and

00:18:41.800 some insight in here but she just ends up burying it under all these like platitudes yeah well i

00:18:48.180 mean the question with all of this stuff is like once you've got a platform what do you do with

00:18:52.720 that platform exactly and it sounds like part of the way that she built that platform is through

00:18:59.440 these like real genuine gut-wrenching kind of moments right and then once she sort of built

00:19:07.120 out that platform she like took a turn and was like prescriptive exactly and then it just it's

00:19:13.100 just like boring refrigerator magnet stuff so in 2000 she moves to la she originally enrolls in

00:19:21.120 acting school but she ends up getting an internship at miramax and dropping out immediately oh no the

00:19:29.220 miramax thing is not going where you think it is no i don't mean it's just a cursed allegiance

00:19:34.060 what feels like it's happening so this is where she meets dave dave will eventually become her

00:19:41.240 husband she is an executive assistant at the time he is i had to go to his linkedin profile because

00:19:48.200 like both of them are so vague about like what jobs they actually had at any given time at the

00:19:52.940 time he was the assistant brand manager for miramax home video and you can tell from his

00:20:00.060 linkedin profile that dave hollis was one of these guys that was just like management fast

00:20:05.080 track he graduates from pepperdine in the late 1990s and then his linkedin is like year-long

00:20:12.100 stints in like higher and higher level positions it's like assistant director then like regional

00:20:18.080 director then director then like vp he starts out at like columbia records and then he ends up

00:20:23.900 managing destiny's child what like i guess when they toured with their first album they were like

00:20:28.700 not that big he managed the entire u.s tour we're already like two degrees of separation for beyonce

00:20:34.780 at this point in the episode he gets this job at miramax he's there for like a year and a half

00:20:38.720 and then he ends up working the rest of his career at disney so he pretty quickly becomes

00:20:42.660 like a reasonably high level disney executive huh interestingly like this is such a weird 0.65

00:20:47.000 trajectory he now also is a fucking self-help guru so he also has a book you gotta get your

00:20:53.280 best life lessons from a pepperdine grad who was fast-tracked in management and who regularly 0.97

00:20:59.120 describes his job as the easiest job in the world oh no he's like i was head of distribution for

00:21:05.080 disney while they were producing like marvel movies and star wars movies uh-huh he's like i

00:21:09.840 didn't have to do anything i was just like hello china we'd like to show our movie in your country

00:21:13.740 and they're like okay yeah why am i taking advice from you again is it okay if i look up a picture

00:21:18.220 of dave hollis oh yeah yeah wait let's let's google together here we go you know what some

00:21:22.680 of these pictures look like is he looks like a little bit of like clark kent yeah he's got the

00:21:26.960 glasses all american white dude he's got the glasses a lot of chambray shirts and a lot of

00:21:35.060 you know my wife is big on instagram so these photos are washed out in this particular way 0.78

00:21:39.680 what does she look like she has a blowout in every single one of these pictures 1.00

00:21:47.060 she uh looks to be very petite many of these photos include her sort of throwing her head

00:21:54.960 back and laughing or she looks to be like giggling or smiling at him or whatever it's like the kind

00:22:01.680 of vibe of instagram photos that is like when they try and sort of capture the same kinds of

00:22:07.180 moments as like engagement photos right yeah look how much fun we have together and they're all

00:22:12.320 very clearly posed but they're all also pretending not to be posed uh-huh it's like you just happen

00:22:18.660 to have caught us like this you could see her having like she would have like a live laugh

00:22:23.740 love sign but it would be like handmade by somebody yeah yeah and it would be one of her

00:22:28.560 own quotes correct so when they meet he's like a quote-unquote lowly like mid-level executive at

00:22:35.220 miramax he is 26 and she is 18 and there's a fascinating like rashomon thing where they both

00:22:43.620 in their respective books describe their courtship periods she describes herself i think extremely

00:22:49.960 accurately as like the most sheltered person in america right she grew up in this extremely

00:22:55.400 religious household she then has this traumatic event she alludes to some boys that she's maybe

00:23:01.720 kissed kind of sort of in high school but she's never had a boyfriend before he is 26 years old

00:23:08.060 he's been you know he's been touring with destiny's child he understands the industry he's kind of on

00:23:13.000 the fast track to success in his book this is so telling he describes her as 18 going on 29 no and

00:23:21.380 it's like he tries to do this whole thing that she's like wise beyond her years no she's clearly

00:23:26.160 intelligent but like this is one of the most naive people on planet earth in the year 2000

00:23:32.360 i also think that that thing of like 18 going on 29 like feels like reminiscent of the stuff

00:23:39.940 that's like she might have been 16 but she was all woman right it just gets really creepy that's not

00:23:45.520 totally what he's doing here but it just i don't know man it just feels like it feels like a red

00:23:51.040 flag there's a huge power differential here yes like yes he is he's not her direct boss but he's

00:23:57.160 like in the management layer of a company that she works at and she's at the lowest rung of the

00:24:02.000 ladder so i guess he had spoken to rachel a couple times on the phone because she's like answering

00:24:07.440 the phones for this guy that she's the executive assistant to he finally shows up the office and

00:24:13.620 she describes it as like love at first sight wow he walks in wearing like a business suit and like

00:24:18.940 a leather carrier bag and she says that like our eyes met and it was like so cool that he's this

00:24:24.500 like business suit guy but he also has like a leather carrier bag which is like i don't know

00:24:29.140 a lot of people have those but fine he's wearing a suit but also he had a kenneth cole reaction bag

00:24:36.060 i smelled axe body spray as soon as he walked in it seems like after they have this kind of

00:24:44.760 meet cute when she sees them for the first time they start flirting at one point in some interview

00:24:49.540 she says that like they were emailing rap lyrics back and forth what they just like they're like

00:24:55.140 we used to email rap lyrics back and forth lol but like i'm like wait details i for some reason

00:25:00.160 with these two i imagine it's not gonna be like wu-tang i know it's gonna be like young mcs bust

00:25:06.660 a move it's tickle tune typhoon i think they think that's right the whole rest of this chapter where

00:25:12.160 she's describing their courtship is just like flapping red flags in the breeze he asks her out

00:25:17.700 on their first date she shows up at the date and she's dressed in the nines and he's just like in 0.97

00:25:22.680 a sweatshirt and jeans uh-huh and then listen to this fucking nightmare she says we were seated at 0.99

00:25:28.700 a table he ordered a bottle of wine i hope you're not one of those girls who's afraid to eat on a 0.98

00:25:33.300 date he laughed it annoyed me i know i know it annoyed me too rachel i didn't like the comparison

00:25:40.500 to anyone else, didn't like the reminder that this wasn't his very first date too.

00:25:45.220 I responded by eating more than half the pizza we were sharing.

00:25:48.000 He talked about himself for two hours straight.

00:25:50.280 I didn't mind.

00:25:51.040 I was fascinated.

00:25:52.020 Oh, Rachel.

00:25:53.740 My God.

00:25:54.740 Oh, Rachel. 1.00

00:25:56.100 Run for the hills. 1.00

00:25:58.180 I know where this story goes and still I want better for her.

00:26:01.420 I know.

00:26:02.020 Give them this.

00:26:02.880 I mean, it just only gets worse.

00:26:03.960 So then, of course, they go on one date and she immediately starts like thinking like,

00:26:08.600 well, now we're dating.

00:26:09.480 Like, he's my boyfriend.

00:26:10.500 they go on a second date to like a hip soup place i don't understand how l.a works so i guess they

00:26:18.600 go on the second date and they're emailing back and forth and he asks her like where'd you go to

00:26:22.460 college and this is the moment where she has to like disclose that like i'm actually 19 i just

00:26:27.480 got out of high school she says in her book she's like you know i broke i broke it to him

00:26:32.280 and then she says he responded like a champ he told me i was doogie hauser and did i feel like

00:26:39.220 some sort of child prodigy because not only did i have this job but i was also in a real

00:26:44.040 relationship with a grown-up nope nope nope nope nope and like she she describes this as like she's

00:26:54.300 revealing something embarrassing to him like i'm only 19 and then she's like he responded great

00:26:59.380 like he took it great but like what is there to take he's in a relationship with like a really

00:27:04.020 naive hot 19 year old who's like very easy to manipulate also like unless you're dating like

00:27:09.940 a member of the wiggles i don't necessarily want to date someone who describes themselves as like

00:27:15.980 a grown-up in a way that's like a prize can you imagine no thank you no thank you so it seems like

00:27:22.300 he kind of tries to break up with her at this point but she like really lobbies to stay together

00:27:27.920 she says like very quickly after this conversation she's like spending almost every night at his

00:27:33.840 apartment i don't think she realized this at the time but she realizes now that she was like kind

00:27:38.940 of a booty call that like they didn't really do anything together and whenever they went out with

00:27:43.660 his friends his friends would refer to her as the 19 year old ew and he would like invite her over 0.70

00:27:49.480 late at night like they're not having like sex sex at this point but like they're fooling around 0.77

00:27:53.100 right they're doing the my dad is a pentecostal minister version exactly there's also this thing

00:27:57.980 where like they go to a house party together and she introduces him like oh it's my boyfriend dave

00:28:02.040 and then he gets so mad at her for introducing him as her boyfriend that he doesn't talk to her 0.99

00:28:07.920 for two weeks what he just sucks ass and this goes on for a year jesus christ his explanation 0.98

00:28:17.420 of all of this of course in his book he's like super vague he's like i didn't always treat rachel 0.98

00:28:23.100 so great during that time but like he doesn't get into specifics and then he has this whole thing

00:28:27.300 that i guess he had just gotten out of a long-term relationship with somebody else

00:28:30.380 And he's like, I was afraid to trust.

00:28:32.440 I realized immediately when I met Rachel that like she was something special and I was afraid of how strong my feelings were.

00:28:40.020 So I like pushed her away. 0.99

00:28:42.220 It's just making me realize how many dudes have like told me that shit. 1.00

00:28:45.940 And like that's just a way of covering up for their like miserable behavior. 1.00

00:28:49.140 Yeah, that's right.

00:28:49.800 Or for being like, I wasn't actually that into this person.

00:28:52.600 Or I didn't think they were deserving of my respect.

00:28:55.520 I sort of clench up when people talk about pushing someone away.

00:28:58.240 because i'm like ah maybe that's what's happening so the next chapter of the story he gets

00:29:02.720 transferred to minneapolis for one of these like moving his way up the corporate ladder disney

00:29:07.600 things and she says that she loses her virginity to him as like a way of keeping him oh no he moves

00:29:15.680 to minneapolis they try it long distance it seems like that only lasts like a couple weeks he

00:29:19.240 basically calls to like break up with her and he's like i can't do this she's devastated she's

00:29:24.200 crying she's just like completely destroyed by this and then i guess a couple days go by

00:29:29.800 he calls her to be like how are you like just checking in and she says this in her book she

00:29:36.440 says calmly and without any dramatics i told him i am done with this i am done with you don't ever

00:29:42.580 call me again wow why he choked out because i don't deserve to be treated like this because i

00:29:48.040 can't go back and forth because i don't like what i've become but mostly because you said we were

00:29:52.740 friends i don't want to be friends if this is how you treat someone you care about wow she hangs up 0.98

00:29:58.740 and goes to sleep bone dry eyes just like at peace good and then the most fucking disappointing 0.90

00:30:06.960 twist to this entire story so it's like she goes to sleep everything's fine like dave's out of her 0.90

00:30:11.880 life and then very next paragraph you're gonna scream i woke up to someone banging on my front

00:30:19.100 door no michael no it's like the worst twist it's the thing that they do in movies and you're like

00:30:29.580 this is rapey and bad like this would never work in real life but it appears to have worked in real

00:30:34.520 life and then i guess he like shows up to like declare his love for her and then this is atrocious

00:30:42.140 she doesn't get into details but she says this is the great part of the story this is the moment

00:30:48.360 that feels like a movie or a romance novel.

00:30:50.580 This is where I tell you that I woke up

00:30:52.180 and found my husband on the other side of the front step.

00:30:55.080 The man who treated me badly,

00:30:56.600 who had strung me along and who couldn't make up his mind

00:30:58.700 was lost somewhere between his parents' house

00:31:00.760 and my apartment that night.

00:31:02.460 I know it seems dramatic, but that's really what happened.

00:31:05.000 I mean, the thing that's like hard about this

00:31:07.520 is she's right in that that is a lot of romance stories, right?

00:31:13.020 Like we have a lot of things that are pitched

00:31:15.820 as romantic narratives that are like

00:31:17.520 pretty profoundly manipulative or abusive so i'm like she's right it does sound like a movie or

00:31:23.900 something but i'm like don't the movies are bad too the movies are very bad and then this is the

00:31:29.720 thing that she always does is she takes this story and then she like turns it into this like universal

00:31:35.060 bumper sticker advice rule so she says in the next couple paragraphs people will treat you with as

00:31:40.720 much or as little respect as you allow them to and our dysfunctional relationship started the

00:31:45.380 first time he treated me badly and i accepted it like this is sort of the problem with this

00:31:51.140 entire approach is it's not clear from this story that you can draw like a universal lesson that's

00:31:56.540 right i mean she seems to have won like some sort of weird lottery where like the guy who treated

00:32:00.540 her like shit seemed like he did turn out to be a pretty good husband but most people don't win 0.92

00:32:05.800 that lottery in like 99 out of 100 of these cases where somebody treats you like this the ending is 1.00

00:32:11.920 he knocks on the door and you take him back and then he treats you like shit again yeah 0.92

00:32:15.680 sorry i'm like having a hard time gathering my thoughts about this because it's so 0.98

00:32:21.440 it's so shitty because right like part of what she's trying to do is remind

00:32:25.680 people in relationships and predominantly women in relationships um that they have agency but also 0.89

00:32:32.380 like part of what that does is it like falls back on this like old shitty rhetoric about like

00:32:37.700 it's on women to be gatekeepers to access to themselves in relationships with men. 0.65

00:32:44.820 I don't know, man. It just feels bad. It just feels bad and icky.

00:32:48.940 So the next thing that happens in the story is Rachel sort of begins the on-ramp to becoming

00:32:55.300 a nationally famous influencer. And this begins in 2004 when she starts her own high-end events

00:33:03.740 company okay so it's called chic events and one of the things that made me go down a huge rabbit

00:33:10.700 hole on this she you know she's been the subject of a million sort of like people magazine glossy

00:33:16.100 profiles like meet rachel hollis and there's all this like weird vague phrasing where they'll just

00:33:23.040 be like after she worked at miramax she struck out on her own and started an events company

00:33:27.680 in her book she says i went from production company to another production company and had

00:33:33.360 the opportunity to do event planning in another profile they say like chic events like started in

00:33:40.220 her garage there's no like origin story yeah there's it's conspicuous to me that she has written

00:33:45.220 three books her husband has also written a book and in none of these books is just a chronological

00:33:51.200 account of how she went from being like a very low level executive assistant at miramax to running

00:33:58.500 her own company at age 21 yeah she needs to actually explain how this happened and how she

00:34:04.240 was able to do right this is the um i started this business with five dollars in my pocket

00:34:09.060 sort of thing where you're like what no you didn't you absolutely did not so i had to go to her 0.65

00:34:14.580 fucking linkedin profile to get a timeline she's at miramax for 18 months then she goes to ogilvy 0.85

00:34:20.020 and mather which is this huge pr firm where she's an account coordinator for mattel and motorola 0.99

00:34:26.200 And then for another like eight months, she's a brand coordinator for something called DIC Entertainment.

00:34:32.660 I think that this is where she gets experience in event planning.

00:34:36.960 She mentions offhand that she got laid off at Miramax or they downsized or something.

00:34:42.360 And somebody was like, hey, there's a premiere tonight.

00:34:44.960 Do you want to help organize it?

00:34:46.640 Huh.

00:34:46.940 So we learn from her husband's book, he's very explicit about this, that like he supported her financially.

00:34:53.420 and extremely importantly neither of them say how she got her first couple clients

00:35:00.420 planning high-end parties is like really high stakes and really difficult yeah we've all watched

00:35:05.560 like my super sweet 16 like the things that rich people want at these events are completely

00:35:11.100 deranged yeah they're wild i found this like weird like 2013 interview with her where she says her

00:35:17.360 first party that she ever organized her first event was some rich family who was celebrating

00:35:22.800 their son becoming an eagle scout and she said their budget is the size of some small island

00:35:28.780 nations so it's like how is a 21 year old getting like a five figure event gig with like basically

00:35:38.520 like six eight months of experience as like presumably a low-level employee for an events

00:35:43.880 planning company that's bananas like every part of that's a mad lib reading between the lines 0.89

00:35:50.020 she has to be using dave's connections at disney to be getting these clients she eventually does

00:35:55.760 events for bradley cooper she does al gore something something inconvenient truth yeah

00:36:00.700 she does like you can find old people magazine articles if you go like back into google there's

00:36:06.860 old articles about like some sitcom actress on like some cw show that i've never heard of

00:36:11.120 is like planning her wedding to like this pop star and like it's being planned by rachel hollis

00:36:16.440 like she's a very successful celebrity event planner for like a decade i do like that we get

00:36:22.380 like really lovely feedback and compliments from people being like it's so wonderful to hear a show 0.70

00:36:27.020 that's so deeply researched and reported and i'm like yeah we're fucking around in the people 0.81

00:36:31.760 magazine archives i want archive.org every day primary sources i i have talked on your wrong 0.80

00:36:40.920 about a million times about how like i don't i don't even really believe that the concept of

00:36:44.480 like, a gold digger, like, exists.

00:36:46.680 Like, I feel really weird

00:36:48.200 seeming like I'm criticizing somebody

00:36:50.320 for using her husband's money in connection.

00:36:52.600 I think, like, use your husband's money.

00:36:54.440 I don't care.

00:36:55.460 I have financially supported people I've dated.

00:36:57.580 I've gotten financial support from people I've dated.

00:36:59.580 Like, all of this is totally fine.

00:37:01.240 And, like, normal and lovely, even.

00:37:03.020 It's super lovely.

00:37:03.880 If these are husband connections,

00:37:06.060 that's, like, a good move from a husband

00:37:08.300 who's not always been the king of good moves.

00:37:10.840 Exactly.

00:37:11.180 It's, like, this is your dream.

00:37:12.200 I'm going to help you achieve your dream.

00:37:13.400 This seems like a nice thing to do, but then it's just very conspicuous for someone who's

00:37:18.620 a lifestyle influencer, a motivational influencer, who is giving advice to other people on how

00:37:23.740 to make it, on how to be successful, and her whole thing is wake up early and get rid of

00:37:29.820 self-doubt and all of this, you have the power within you.

00:37:33.920 If your career is the result of your husband being a high-level Disney executive who knows 0.99

00:37:39.620 a billion celebrities, just fucking own it. 0.98

00:37:42.440 This is someone who's giving advice, but it's not just someone who's giving advice. 0.99

00:37:45.240 It's someone who's saying everything is in your own control.

00:37:50.120 Yeah, man.

00:37:50.660 Of course you can do it on your own if you've got a husband with like extreme connections

00:37:56.680 in LA and you've got startup capital, presumably from his salary is presumably pretty generous.

00:38:03.480 The vagueness of it feels like it points to some stuff she doesn't want to talk about.

00:38:08.800 Well, it renders all of her advice moot.

00:38:10.560 she's very explicit about this that she's like this will work for anyone anyone can do it if

00:38:15.240 you just work hard enough right get up at 4 a.m make make time for yourself and it's like rachel

00:38:20.040 you didn't get here by making time for yourself or by getting up at 4 a.m work harder immigrants

00:38:25.580 like she seems like a really hard-working person and she's clearly intelligent but there's a huge

00:38:30.960 difference between building a skyscraper from the ground up and building a skyscraper from like a

00:38:36.720 99 story building so we're now in 2008 she has this successful events planning company but it's 1.00

00:38:45.420 very obvious that rachel wants more and i i want to be very careful here because i think women are

00:38:51.820 criticized for having ambition in a way that men aren't rachel was like very openly ambitious like

00:38:58.740 she she talks in her book about like wanting to be wealthy and like wanting to have a vacation 0.92

00:39:02.620 home in hawaii and honestly fine sure like men talk about this shit all the time right like i 0.94

00:39:07.720 wanted to be a billionaire when i was five years old and we're like wow what an ambitious kid and 0.96

00:39:10.940 it's cool like it was clear that rachel wanted to have a larger platform so even when she has this

00:39:17.360 events planning company she starts showing up on daytime tv like she shows up on like the rachel

00:39:22.020 ray show and on like the steve harvey show as like a sort of cooking lifestyle events guru like how

00:39:29.280 to make the perfect martini and stuff like that uh-huh she also in 2008 she's deleted these

00:39:35.140 archives but in 2008 she became kind of like a mommy blogger it's hard to imagine this because

00:39:40.200 it's not that long ago but instagram is not invented until 2010 the the word influencer is

00:39:46.320 not in the dictionary until 2019 and it's only like 2015 2016 when people even kind of start

00:39:51.540 using it in the parlance that we do today and in 2008 2012 you know the internet is sort of

00:39:57.700 starting to catapult these people with like recipe blogs advice blogs like these people are kind of

00:40:04.260 becoming celebrities in their own right the whole influencer thing is basically a marketing

00:40:08.860 innovation it's basically brands realizing that you know word of mouth is a much more effective

00:40:14.960 form of marketing than advertisements like if you see an advertisement with michael jordan

00:40:18.740 and he's like wear this cologne you like understand that you're being advertised to

00:40:22.600 so that's going to exert less of an influence but if your friend is like i just tried this

00:40:26.920 cologne it's really nice you should try it you trust them as a trusted source yeah or someone

00:40:31.300 who you don't know but speaks to you like you are a friend which really seems to be the rachel

00:40:35.920 hollis the whole thing well exactly this is the whole this is the whole influencer segment of the

00:40:40.920 market is that these are people who are public figures but people have relationships to them

00:40:46.140 that are much more like a friend and marketers start to notice this and they're like wait a

00:40:50.980 minute people are like really taking seriously what this like recipe blogger lady says and if

00:40:54.720 She says, like, you should buy this brand of pickles. 0.78

00:40:57.160 People will go out and buy that brand of pickles.

00:40:59.180 So the pickle people are like, hmm, maybe we can just pay her to talk about our pickles.

00:41:03.560 And that's how we get the economy that we have now. 0.99

00:41:05.960 Rachel's very lucky in that she got in on this early.

00:41:07.940 And around this period, around 2008 to 2015, it's very obvious that she wants to catapult

00:41:14.560 herself to some sort of influencer status, even though that term doesn't exist yet.

00:41:19.160 This is very clearly what she's going for.

00:41:20.940 And she tries, like, three different approaches to getting there.

00:41:24.720 The first is she launches in 2013 a website called The Chic Site.

00:41:29.740 It's a lifestyle website.

00:41:30.740 It's basically like marthastewart.com.

00:41:32.500 I imagine tablescapes being part of that.

00:41:34.820 A lot of tables.

00:41:35.820 Yep.

00:41:35.980 A lot of like nice photography.

00:41:37.540 It's clear that she's hired people to write for it.

00:41:40.000 She's hired people to present it really professionally.

00:41:41.900 The whole, the archives are still up.

00:41:43.100 This is where I got the blog post about her brother.

00:41:44.900 I think with this website, I think she was kind of trying to make herself into like a 0.71

00:41:48.380 Rachel Ray or like an Ina Garten kind of figure.

00:41:50.880 This was also a time when like, I feel like the Food Network was like a bigger deal than

00:41:53.540 two.

00:41:53.840 she published two cookbooks during this time whoa it also feels like worth lifting up like

00:42:00.020 the level that you have to be at both in terms of exposure and in terms of dollars in the door

00:42:06.840 to be able to do a project like this dude i mean this is another privilege thing like it's this is

00:42:13.100 not a mommy blog this is a professional operation with professional photographs and like web

00:42:17.820 developers so we're talking about a team of like numerous people professionally working on this

00:42:23.080 Yes. So, I mean, just, like, take a minute, everybody, and think about how much more money you would need to be making than you are right now to support either multiple contracts or multiple full-time staff or part-time staff. Like, there is money happening.

00:42:43.060 Exactly. Her other play for influencer status, do you remember Chick Lit?

00:42:48.380 The concept of Chick Lit?

00:42:49.720 Yeah. Do you remember this?

00:42:50.760 Yeah, absolutely.

00:42:51.380 it was like books devil wears prada was one of them le divorce was one of them yes yes totally 0.99

00:42:58.160 this was just a thing in book publishing there were a lot of like books written kind of by women

00:43:02.460 for women you know like bridget jones's diary was like one of the original ones it's like women like 0.97

00:43:07.260 dealing with stuff yeah i feel like the entertainment industries are constantly

00:43:11.120 rediscovering that women spend money on things and they're like women buy books and it's like

00:43:17.320 yeah it was the utter shock that like bridesmaids both was good and made money 0.82

00:43:24.300 hollywood is a goldfish so this is fucking wild between 2014 and 2016 she publishes three novels

00:43:32.220 what yes and this is wild i found quite a few reviews of them and like i guess they're good 0.96

00:43:39.460 everyone who has read them says that like they're well written and like well plotted

00:43:44.380 decent fiction so at the same time somehow as she's like running this website and like mommy

00:43:50.080 blogging she also finds time to write a novel based on her experiences as a event planner so

00:43:57.100 it's it's called party girl it's like a kid from the sticks moves to the big city la and like these

00:44:03.260 are her adventures in the wacky world of event planning sure it's a little romana clef yes yeah

00:44:08.820 and so this is like also to her credit she i guess she pitches it to a bunch of new york

00:44:13.180 publishers again which you have to have connections to get those meetings but fine

00:44:17.200 these are all secular publishers and they all say that like there's not enough sex in the book

00:44:22.060 and rachel is a christian and so rachel's like no i want it to be about a christian girl from the 0.78

00:44:26.460 sticks and her wacky adventures but her wacky adventures don't necessarily involve sex like

00:44:30.740 they involve romance and other things and so all of these publishers pass and she says she cried

00:44:37.280 for like an hour and then she stood up and she googled how to self-publish a novel and so she

00:44:42.320 self-published this book i guess word of mouth it started selling like five copies a week 10 copies

00:44:48.920 a week 100 copies a week and just became this rolling snowball and then as it started to get

00:44:53.580 more attention a christian publisher sort of found it and found that it was becoming this deal on the

00:44:58.280 internet and offered to give her a real publishing deal oh and then she publishes two sequels over

00:45:03.300 the next two years i mean that is like good work yeah it's it's actually like a kind of a nice

00:45:07.620 story yeah she didn't compromise her creative vision or her values or her worldview or any of

00:45:13.140 that kind of stuff i get i get that this is wild so okay the third play for influencer status so

00:45:19.260 as she's becoming martha stewart and she's also becoming bridget jones diary she also kind of

00:45:25.940 tries to become a youtuber uh what this is also peak clickbait youtube videos this is when youtube

00:45:32.420 was like becoming a thing is this the era of youtube that's like uh you won't believe what

00:45:38.640 happens two minutes in this one weird trick yes she she has one of her videos is called

00:45:45.700 american tries filipino food no this was like a genre of youtube videos like viral youtube videos

00:45:53.140 white people trying like non-american food yeah it's it's like one of the cringiest things i've

00:45:59.760 ever seen she's like oh it tastes like fish it's just like her like mocking this cuisine it's so 0.78

00:46:04.960 gross all right so i'm i'm sending you this rachel's play for viral fame here we go oh my god

00:46:10.740 mom fashion i get up every day at 5 a.m and every time the alarm goes off i want to cry

00:46:19.340 because it's still dark outside and i don't have to get up that early but i really wanted to write

00:46:24.880 a book. And I really wanted to get in shape. And I really wanted to make sure that my kids ate

00:46:30.860 something healthy before they left for school. And the truth is that we all get the same 24 hours.

00:46:37.160 Oprah has the same 24 hours and Beyonce and Paralympians and that mom you know that has

00:46:42.180 six-pack abs even though she has four kids. We all get those same hours. But you have to decide 1.00

00:46:48.420 how to use them. And I hate with a passion of a thousand sons waking up that early, but it's the

00:46:55.760 only time that I have for my dreams. So you have to decide if your dreams are worth losing some

00:47:02.280 sleep. I keep going back to thinking about those charts that are like how many hours you have to

00:47:10.320 work a minimum wage job to afford a one bedroom apartment. Oh my God, I know. And it'll be like

00:47:14.560 in california you have to work 120 hours and wage to afford a you know market rate one bedroom and

00:47:20.540 all that sort of stuff so i'm like yeah man i guess we all get the same 24 hours not all of

00:47:25.260 us are married to somebody who works for disney or run event sites yeah the other thing that i

00:47:30.480 am noticing about this video is it is as you say very of that moment of youtube and today as we

00:47:39.780 watch this in 2021 this video published in 2014 it has 10,598 views I know which is not a lot of

00:47:47.780 views it didn't go viral the way that she did not go viral Rachel my favorite thing is I am primed

00:47:53.820 to notice this because she does this throughout her career she pretends to be telling you something

00:47:58.560 embarrassing like this is called mom fessions yeah I'm about to admit to something which is

00:48:04.740 that i work all the time and you better work harder like what and then it's like i wake up

00:48:09.620 early and like i hate waking up early but anyway i work harder than you and you're like rachel

00:48:14.240 like what what part of this is like a confession i do appreciate that you and i just instinctually 0.95

00:48:20.560 descended into christian bale batman voice she also this is one of the funniest fucking things 0.85

00:48:27.860 i've ever seen she also has one called i'm married dot dot dot and i'm dating someone 0.95

00:48:34.680 come on and is it like i date my husband i take my husband on dates and that's how we keep it a

00:48:40.100 lie fuck off it's like the most obvious thing because i saw the title i was like she's not 0.93

00:48:45.460 really gonna do this like this must she's there must be like a twist right and then she's like 1.00

00:48:49.500 i'm dating someone i'm dating my husband you're like all right rachel i'm having an affair with

00:48:54.700 my best friend just kidding okay no okay rachel i'm like she talks in here about like she hates

00:49:03.480 getting up early i don't believe her once you watch like an hour of her videos you realize

00:49:07.780 she just gives you the same advice over and over again and it's always get up early like that's one

00:49:12.920 of the only pieces of advice she actually has like actionable advice and i will say as a morning 0.89

00:49:20.620 person myself fellow morning people shut the fuck up about getting up early it doesn't make you a

00:49:28.540 better person like i have been a morning person since i was like 13 years old i would be getting 0.94

00:49:33.380 up at like five in the morning so i would do homework before school oh buddy it doesn't make

00:49:37.340 me virtuous it doesn't make me productive it's just like genetically upbringing like i don't

00:49:42.380 know what it is but like i did not choose to be this way i just i i have my my best most creative

00:49:47.920 hours are in the morning and other people have their best, most creative hours from like 8pm

00:49:52.920 to 2am. There's no moral difference between those two things. Yes. And you and I both know there

00:49:59.080 will sometimes be days at a time where you don't get shit done on the project that you're most 0.96

00:50:04.000 excited about. Weeks, Aubrey. There will be weeks. But that's not a saleable perspective. And it's 0.93

00:50:09.460 not one that gets people excited and feeling like I could do it too. Exactly. I think we should make

00:50:14.820 a maintenance phase self-help book that is just like long questions and like really

00:50:21.360 complex ethical dilemmas from people and her answer is always just it depends

00:50:25.880 i don't know i would need more information it depends on what your situation is i don't know

00:50:31.640 i was thinking we should do a maintenance phase self-help book that's just and like advice book

00:50:37.320 that's just like aggressively honest about your schedule and mine oh every time i get stuck on

00:50:44.440 something i take the dog for a walk so the dog gets between five and seven walks a day if i don't

00:50:50.480 want to get started on something then i get real big into meal prep dude i basically didn't do any

00:50:56.460 writing for like three months a summer because i was playing stardew valley so do you want to see

00:51:03.940 the thing that finally catapults rachel into national attention yes i do this is it she has

00:51:10.560 been trying to go viral for seven years now since roughly 2008 and in 2015 this happens i'm sending

00:51:18.500 you a clip where she's describing what she does and how she goes viral for the first time i really

00:51:24.080 enjoy a eclipse show will you show the picture yeah that one did anyone see that a couple people

00:51:32.580 So when this post went crazy, the question that I got over and over from press was, what was your

00:51:43.620 intention? And the truth is, I theme my Instagram every month to a color and March was orange. And

00:51:51.380 so I had this super cute bikini top and I'm Southern, so I love a monogram. And so it had

00:51:57.720 the monogram and it was orange. And I was like, oh my gosh, my Instagram followers are going to dig

00:52:01.460 this, I'm going to, I'm going to post this picture. So my husband had to speak at something down in

00:52:07.900 Cancun, such a hardship. And I went with him. We got a weekend away from the boys. So I said,

00:52:14.820 Hey Dave, will you go down to the beach with me? And you, will you take a picture? Dave took this

00:52:18.780 picture. And the first thing I see is my stretch marks. And as I was looking at it, I thought,

00:52:24.720 you know, gosh, I've never seen a woman that I know post a picture of herself with stretch marks

00:52:29.800 from a place of pride.

00:52:31.920 So I was like, yeah, I'm just going to leave it in.

00:52:33.520 I have a few, a lot of my followers are moms.

00:52:36.380 I have a lot of girlfriends who follow me.

00:52:37.860 So I'm going to just leave it in, 0.97

00:52:39.120 and they're totally going to get a kick out of this.

00:52:41.160 So this is what I wrote under the picture.

00:52:44.820 I have stretch marks, and I wear a bikini.

00:52:46.780 I have a belly that's permanently flabby

00:52:49.500 from carrying three giant babies, and I wear a bikini.

00:52:52.880 My belly button is saggy,

00:52:54.780 which is something I didn't even know was possible before kids,

00:52:57.600 and I wear a bikini.

00:53:00.180 I wear a bikini because I'm proud of this body

00:53:02.580 and every mark on it.

00:53:04.080 Those marks prove that I was blessed enough

00:53:05.960 to carry my babies

00:53:06.980 and that flabby tummy means I worked hard

00:53:09.400 to lose what weight I could.

00:53:10.960 I wear a bikini because the only man

00:53:13.040 whose opinion matters

00:53:14.080 knows what I went through to look this way.

00:53:17.320 That same man says he's never seen anything sexier

00:53:19.900 than my body, marks and all.

00:53:22.160 They aren't scars, ladies. 0.98

00:53:23.760 They're stripes and you've earned them. 1.00

00:53:26.060 Flaunt that body with pride. 0.97

00:53:27.600 we got to the health and wellness section of the episode fucking jesus i totally get that this is a 0.93

00:53:38.060 real and empowering and meaningful thing to people and also i understand that those same people will 0.85

00:53:44.160 be like get it those are tiger stripes you did earn your stripes you earned that belly and i'm 0.66

00:53:49.380 like what about people who didn't fucking earn the belly what about people who didn't do the 0.90

00:53:53.200 things that you think make it okay right just i have a really strong visceral and negative 0.99

00:54:00.260 reaction to this kind of stuff because it's all the shit that's like you should love your body 0.94

00:54:04.840 but not if it looks like that this this post gets 10 million hits no god if this sensation it's a 0.99

00:54:11.280 massive deal we understand that this kind of rhetoric coming from like this kind of person 1.00

00:54:18.000 on that platform 99 times out of 100 comes with like but you know other women shouldn't be doing

00:54:25.480 this or just immediate shift to judgment of other people yes it's the i'm body positive as long as

00:54:33.160 you're happy and healthy and i'm like well depressed people should be able to be body

00:54:37.460 positive too and people who are not perceived as being healthy should be able to like have good

00:54:42.520 feelings about their bodies the reason i wanted to include a clip from this talk because it's like

00:54:46.340 a 30 minute long talk she opens with describing this picture and how it went viral and it was 0.99

00:54:51.060 this source of like huge pride she got these like thousands of messages from other women talking

00:54:54.680 about how meaningful it was and then she immediately without any acknowledgement that this is what 1.00

00:55:01.160 she's doing she shifts into weight loss advice she's just like you know the things that i was

00:55:05.380 putting into my body were like really gross and then i saw a nutritionist and the nutritionist

00:55:09.780 was like would you feed your kids like this no and then i realized i shouldn't be eating like

00:55:14.840 that either and it's like wait a minute two minutes ago you were saying your body like doesn't matter

00:55:21.280 people should have pride but then you're also like now telling me how i can lose 10 pounds

00:55:26.400 to look different that's how it always all shows up exactly it is this sort of thing where i'm like

00:55:30.980 are you not going to acknowledge that you're i'm going to lose 10 pounds post baby or even 20 or

00:55:36.800 30 pounds post baby is like maybe not the entire world of weight loss and like are you not going

00:55:43.180 to acknowledge that like, this kind of weird facile logic also very directly feeds into deep

00:55:49.620 judgments of fat people. It's so frustrating, because I don't want to take away anybody's

00:55:53.960 ability to sort of like work through their own body stuff. I know. But also people overwhelmingly

00:55:59.340 do that in a way that deeply, deeply reinforces and relies on their own biases against fatness

00:56:05.260 and fat people. I don't know, man. It's just, it's a real mess. I don't like to take things

00:56:10.480 away from people but like the minute i saw this i could feel myself pulling out like a bucket

00:56:16.220 labeled like that's problematic and like filling it up with juice it's also telling that in the

00:56:24.400 caption of that photo because of course you're training people how to react to the photo with

00:56:28.320 the caption that you post yeah she says like i've lost as much weight as i can oh god we're not

00:56:33.560 trained to see photos without all that context and have the same reaction also she has this photo

00:56:39.700 that's her with again some sort of like loose skin from pregnancy and weight loss and whatever else 0.95

00:56:47.040 she also has a visible fucking thigh gap yes i don't i don't know man i just feel like such a 0.98

00:56:54.440 dick when i talk about this stuff we're like it's like both of us are like tense up we're like a 0.99

00:56:59.440 thin white woman is doing body positivity totally totally like oh here it comes it's when you can

00:57:05.800 feel the ramp up to fight or flight but you're not all the way there yet yes that is the response 1.00

00:57:11.660 that i'm having it's just like i know this person is gonna say horrific fucking shit about people 0.99

00:57:17.100 who look like me and then if i say anything about it they'll go you just don't want me to love my 0.99

00:57:22.360 body and you're just jealous i know how this conversation goes what about the dove ads 0.97

00:57:28.420 shut the fuck up yeah i bought the dove okay the other thing that i really want to talk about in 1.00

00:57:38.680 this clip and i don't know if you noticed this is the baffling fucking lies that she tells 1.00

00:57:44.620 oh i did not notice this did you notice in the beginning she says like i'm southern and we love 0.99

00:57:50.160 a monogram oh oh yes i did hear that and i was like she said i'm southern and she keeps going

00:57:55.340 y'all you're from bakersfield california you're from where my dad is from if you listen to the

00:58:00.440 whole talk she does this numerous times where she's she says later she's like i'm southern and 0.95

00:58:05.280 you know we love a fake lash is there any anything about her living in the south ever again like this 0.99

00:58:11.520 is why you get obsessed with this person is because you're like she's telling weird fucking 1.00

00:58:15.740 lies and then i spend like hours on the internet being like rachel hollis the south like rachel 0.98

00:58:20.500 hollis texas rachel hollis louisiana the closest thing i could find is that i think her dad might

00:58:26.080 be from texas because she talks when she was growing up how her dad had some sort of like

00:58:30.380 corporate job where they had offices in california and offices in west texas and i guess a couple

00:58:36.780 times it seems two three four times as a kid she and her dad would drive to west texas together

00:58:42.620 and have like a road trip and then a road trip back so that indicates to me that like maybe they

00:58:47.320 had family there also like my dad is from ohio i don't go around being like i'm a midwestern you

00:58:53.240 know us midwesterners right i straightforwardly grew up in seattle yes and this is like a pattern

00:58:59.300 that shows up in like throughout her books in this presentation she talks about how her and dave

00:59:07.380 after they get married she says like we didn't have much money but like we scraped together

00:59:12.660 enough savings to travel to europe for the first time what and it's like rachel he's he was a he

00:59:18.120 was an executive at disney like you didn't scrimp and save yeah again i don't care like go to europe

00:59:25.700 but it's weird to build this mythology around yourself of like we were like two hard scrabble

00:59:30.960 young people and like somehow we made it to europe it's like he was making seven figures

00:59:35.900 there's like a little bit of hilaria baldwin happening here dude i know i kept thinking

00:59:40.100 about that como cdc cucumber a little bit of that so this photo goes like mega super duper viral

00:59:48.020 this catapults her into another level of fame i believe again she hasn't really said this but i

00:59:55.060 think this is how she gets publishers sniffing around to publish girl wash your face ah gotcha

01:00:01.500 she's selling empowerment to a conservative christian audience which is also a really

01:00:06.400 interesting thing in that there had been sort of you know body positivity and stuff like this was

01:00:10.680 sort of bubbling under the surface but it was mostly a left-wing thing at that point there's

01:00:14.680 this movement on the left but all of a sudden you have this person who's like the perfect avatar and

01:00:19.280 vessel for that who's speaking to right-wing women and when that post goes like super duper viral

01:00:24.880 they realize that like there's money in them dar hills if you can sell an empowerment message

01:00:29.840 to conservatives so before we get to the content of rachel's books i cannot help myself and i want

01:00:37.200 to talk about her podcast which she launches in 2017 i was trying to absorb like a kind of

01:00:45.000 representative sample and one of the first episodes that i went to is a podcast episode

01:00:50.540 called how to start a podcast oh so we are going to watch another clip you are okay you are going

01:00:57.260 to die okay i was like i just want a 12 episode season so then i needed to find 12 people who

01:01:05.360 would let me interview them and i did not have any of the connections that i have now i had no idea

01:01:12.200 who to ask i really i mean like i had like five followers nobody really cared about what i was

01:01:17.800 doing and like oh hi i'm you know over here trying to start a podcast will you let me interview you

01:01:22.240 people were like, no, or they wouldn't respond at all. So I had to get really creative. And that

01:01:27.500 first season, to be honest, like it's a bit of a miracle that people said yes, because I don't

01:01:33.420 think that I really had earned the right to like ask them. I honestly think so much in life is

01:01:40.960 having the courage to try is having the audacity to just ask because you really never know. And

01:01:47.520 I just asked. And just to give you a little insight there, I asked in a really concise

01:01:52.720 and professional way. So I would get contact information and that in those days, it was an

01:01:57.540 email. And I would say, I have this podcast and, you know, here's what I'm doing. And here's the

01:02:02.600 why. Here's how many followers I have on social media. I'll make myself available to your schedule.

01:02:07.360 Please let me know if you can do it. I think that the reason that a handful of people said yes,

01:02:11.940 is that I was concise. I was quick. I told them I would make myself available to their schedule

01:02:15.980 because people are always super busy.

01:02:17.640 And I had some stats.

01:02:19.380 So I was like, here's how many followers I have on Facebook

01:02:21.040 or here's what I'm doing on Instagram.

01:02:22.660 So I had something that was like, there's not,

01:02:25.020 like people will listen to this.

01:02:28.400 Thoughts.

01:02:28.800 Yeah, I'm going to say a similar thing

01:02:31.960 to what I said in our Shallow Howl bonus episode,

01:02:35.060 which is this is a rich text full of bad points.

01:02:38.200 I know.

01:02:38.860 I mean, I guess my question for you is like,

01:02:41.020 does it get to be something you can actually operationalize?

01:02:44.380 No.

01:02:44.660 All she's doing is repackaging her own experience, but like being kind of vague about it because she doesn't want to admit how many connections and how much privilege she has.

01:02:55.440 So she's talking around the fact that like my husband is a Disney executive.

01:03:00.560 At the time I started my podcast in 2017, I had more than 100,000 Instagram followers.

01:03:06.440 I had a mega viral photo.

01:03:08.940 I had written three novels.

01:03:10.900 Right.

01:03:11.020 So, like, what she actually did to launch her podcast is, like, she called up her connections.

01:03:17.420 Right.

01:03:17.600 One of her first podcast guests is Joy Cho, also, like, a lifestyle influencer.

01:03:22.800 And Joy Cho, years before, had given a blurb to Rachel for her cookbook.

01:03:28.820 Oh.

01:03:29.140 If you look at her cookbook, it's like, I like cooking these recipes.

01:03:32.100 Joy Cho on the back or whatever.

01:03:33.580 So they already had some level of contact.

01:03:35.980 She obviously called somebody who she knew on some level.

01:03:39.080 but for her to give that as advice would require her to admit that she has connections this would

01:03:45.540 be like phineas making a video being like how i landed a guest spot on a billy eilish record and

01:03:52.440 you're like well you're her brother yes that's how you did it like that's actually reasonable advice

01:03:57.400 yes use your connections i had already been in the industry i had been planning celebrity weddings

01:04:02.300 for 12 years at this point so i was lucky to know a lot of high status people who i could write 0.98

01:04:08.580 emails to right just say that rachel it's fine but then she does this whole rigmarole about how 0.76

01:04:14.980 like make sure you write a concise email and like i wrote a really business-like email it's like

01:04:20.540 rachel they didn't reply because your email was good right they replied because it's like who's

01:04:24.980 rachel hollis ah yeah i know her i think somewhere in her brain she actually thinks that she got

01:04:31.120 guests on the first season of her podcast because her emails were good well and like a very bad

01:04:36.140 email is is a good way to get a quick no but it's not the answer to getting a yes it's also the the

01:04:42.420 other like genre of information in this clip other than like just weird lies is just useless advice

01:04:49.560 it's like yeah when you reach out to people in a business email you should probably write it in

01:04:53.560 like a business like concise way right you shouldn't just write an email that's like a

01:04:58.480 voice memo attached of you being like podcast exactly don't like don't send nudes

01:05:04.260 write a normal adult email great rachel and like yeah at other points in this podcast episode about

01:05:11.800 how to start a podcast she talks about how like you should have a consistent release schedule

01:05:15.520 if you have a podcast that's easy to record it might be better for time management if you record

01:05:20.000 like three episodes at once on the same day and then release them every week this is all fine

01:05:25.180 advice yeah but it's like if you googled how to start a podcast those would be like the first

01:05:30.140 three things that came up yeah it would be like if she was like come to me for my exclusive list

01:05:35.640 of what's coming to netflix this month and i'm like there are hundreds of those on the internet

01:05:40.020 we already know that we can find from so many places rachel this is something that i actually

01:05:45.020 find really fascinating and weird like i have watched hours of rachel hollis i have read

01:05:49.840 hundreds of pages of rachel hollis stuff there's no there's nothing actionable huh she has this

01:05:55.380 fascinating chapter in her book i didn't see that coming which is about like how to overcome

01:05:59.660 challenges where she's talking about like during the recession all of a sudden all of her like

01:06:03.940 high-end weddings and stuff get canceled she says i looked at where we really were i got rid of any

01:06:09.100 expenses that were non-essential i figured out every way i could think of to make extra revenue

01:06:13.120 for my business without spending money okay you you cut expenditures and you raised revenues

01:06:19.480 if you want to make more money what you should do is make some more money mike i'm literally i'm not

01:06:25.940 taking this out of context like there is nothing specific this also plays into sort of like a logic

01:06:31.980 about employment and success and all of this sort of stuff which is just like you just got to pound

01:06:37.340 the pavement you just got to get out there and like do the work and you're like okay so what's

01:06:41.020 the work and they're like you just got to go do it yeah specifically and it's like okay her weird

01:06:46.300 approach to this also leads her to give bad advice she has like just this ludicrous advice on like

01:06:51.940 getting advertisers she talks about like local podcast she's like you might want to start a

01:06:56.800 local podcast first uh-huh the like local national distinction doesn't really make sense in podcast

01:07:01.800 because all the distribution is international yeah then she says one of the things you should do

01:07:06.540 is if there's like a restaurant that you like what you should do is you should insert an ad

01:07:11.080 in your show for like joe's pizzeria and then send the pizzeria your show and be like if you pay me

01:07:19.680 all keep doing this what it's the worst advice like you're supposed to just like give free ads

01:07:28.800 to random businesses mike at this point in the show i'd like to just say thanks to our good 0.90

01:07:35.600 friends at mccallan scotch mccallan it's the only scotch i drink like what are we fucking doing here 0.57

01:07:42.080 i have listened to this infernal episode about how to start a podcast twice it's also incredible 0.80

01:07:47.060 to me how it includes no research so like she has a team of 22 people working at her company now

01:07:54.320 what yeah it's like it's like a it's like a media empire she easily could have assigned somebody

01:07:59.500 like hey spend a day like call around a couple like podcast agents ask them like what's going

01:08:04.920 on in the podcast industry these days true crime podcasts are up and like conversational podcasts

01:08:09.820 are down or like movie podcasts are in like get some intelligence on the industry and give us like

01:08:16.660 some insight also just like things like how do you pick a format what kind of growth can you

01:08:23.260 actually reasonably expect yes this whole clip was just like i was listening to it and i was like

01:08:28.640 we have a podcast and we don't really tend to have guests but then what exactly she also does

01:08:36.520 this thing she's like you need to make sure like be very deliberate with the format that you choose

01:08:40.340 you might want to do a solo podcast like this one where you're just talking to the microphone

01:08:43.920 you might want to have guests or like you might want to do something more in-depth like cereal

01:08:47.820 you're like rachel those are completely different levels of like expertise required

01:08:54.700 technology required like you can't just tell people like you might want to do something like

01:08:59.560 cereal which takes months of work right maybe you want to uh have like an investigative journalism

01:09:07.040 awesome podcast from someone who's been in the industry for 15 to 30 years how would anybody do

01:09:13.560 that here's what it reminds me of is uh there is a great maria bamford bit where she talks about

01:09:19.420 like going on a date with some dude and he's like what do you do and she's like i'm a comedian and

01:09:24.600 he goes yeah you know what i would do if i was a comedian and she goes what and he go i just like

01:09:29.060 come up with something like totally original that nobody's ever thought of before like seinfeld 0.83

01:09:34.080 and then i just like put that out into the world and then i just fucking coast 0.64

01:09:38.360 and this is like really a hop skip and a jump away from that kind of like quote unquote advice 0.66

01:09:46.020 that's like yeah man sure you know what i would do if i were a youtuber i'd make a video and then

01:09:51.400 i'd like have it go viral and then i just fucking coast i mean i also i do think that a huge

01:09:57.220 percentage of quote unquote life advice is just people telling you what they did yeah and not 0.78

01:10:02.540 realizing that they're just describing a study with an n of one yeah it's actually fine to just

01:10:08.520 describe your own experience yeah but what's so weird about rachel hollis she's not doing either

01:10:14.220 one she's not giving useful advice and she's not just telling her own story because she's so 0.93

01:10:18.880 fucking vague about her own story well and she'll toss in little gems like i'm southern and you know 0.64

01:10:25.040 we love a monogram wait a minute are you even telling your story it just it's buried under 0.99

01:10:29.620 these layers of like her lack of self-awareness about what she's actually doing yeah that's right

01:10:34.580 i okay i have no we've never done this before but we are we are exactly halfway through my notes

01:10:41.420 and we've and we've been recording for three hours should we make this a two-parter yeah

01:10:46.600 should we just like cut here this is like kind of in the middle of everything but next week we are

01:10:51.780 going to focus in on the content of rachel's books and we're going to talk about the downfall which

01:10:56.960 actually like a weird like six-step process and then we're going of course to circle back

01:11:01.320 to the infamous freeze frame tiktok look we've all underestimated mike's passion for both rachel

01:11:08.860 hollis and face washing how is this the one that i have to split into two how is it not the one 0.96

01:11:14.600 about like international development which i did as a career how is it the fucking influencer 0.92

01:11:19.260 yeah you're like well dr oz done and dusted but rachel hollis now we gotta focus in 0.91

01:11:49.260 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - September 28, 2021

Rachel Hollis Part 1： Hashtag Relatable

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