00:12:59.040Because really during the downfall stuff, which we will get to, BuzzFeed interviews a woman named Oshita Moore, who's a black staffer of the Rachel Hollis company.0.99
00:13:09.300At the time, Oshita was dieting to try to get down to a size 14.
00:13:13.480rachel would come in and talk about like how gross and awful it was like to be a size 14
00:13:18.600like to be as high as a size 14 this whole episode is or two-parter is becoming like sort of a back0.89
00:13:25.720door into a bunch of the like challenges of like body positivity as embodied by like thin white1.00
00:13:34.020women that like the point of body positivity now is perceived as working through your insecurities1.00
00:13:42.080about your body. Yeah. In which case, Rachel's comments are totally valid. Problem is she's not1.00
00:13:48.820fucking thinking about the like impacts of that and the insecurities and the body image issues1.00
00:13:53.920that that will create for people around her. And to have like a massive platform and talking about1.00
00:13:59.900yourself and about this issue in that way. And if she's talking about herself that way,
00:14:05.200listen, here's the real bitter pill to swallow everybody. She's 100% treating fat people worse
00:14:11.120as well oh yeah this is another like common trope here is like i just don't like how i felt at that
00:14:16.940size but i don't treat fat people any differently and i'm like nope nope narrator voice she did
00:14:22.280yeah totally footage not found footage not found of you treating fat people equally and with dignity
00:14:29.420so i mean this kind of leads us into the next quote oh there's been a lot of articles and
00:14:34.560videos made about the fat phobia in rachel's book and there's like a particularly grisly
00:14:40.280paragraph in her first book about fat people. And you see this paragraph show up in all of the
00:14:45.940articles, all of the videos. It's like the passage that sort of goes around. And whenever I see a
00:14:50.320passage going around like this, my first instinct is to be like, well, I'm seeing this without
00:14:54.120context. Like what does it actually look like in context? And this is like the rare unicorn that
00:14:59.960like, I kind of have a fetish for this of like quotes that look bad taken out of context that
00:15:05.740look worse when you see the full context mike will you send me this passage and i'll read it
00:15:11.260into the microphone this is the thing it's this is kind of long but like i want to give you
00:15:16.300the full glory of her argument here okay so i'm gonna i'm i'm putting this in the chat send it i0.95
00:15:22.220can't wait i can't wait to be a fat whoa shit i know i know you are not kidding so this is from0.93
00:15:27.260her first book okay here's what i can tell you truthfully about diet and exercise and weight0.99
00:15:31.400and what it means in my life. Who you are today is incredible. You have so many wonderful qualities
00:15:36.260to offer the world and they are uniquely yours. I believe your creator delights in the intricacies
00:15:41.380of you and he is filled with joy when you live out your potential. Okay, here's the paragraph
00:15:46.340that is taken out of context and then we're going to keep reading. I also believe that humans were
00:15:50.940not made to be out of shape and severely overweight. I think we function better mentally,
00:15:55.920emotionally, and physically when we take care of our bodies with nourishment, water, and exercise.
00:16:00.340the lie I used to believe was that my weight would define me that it would speak volumes about who I
00:16:06.320was as a person today I believe it's not your weight that defines you but the care and consideration
00:16:12.020you put into your body absolutely does I already know that my saying this will annoy some people0.95
00:16:18.500understatement Rachel congratulations Rachel you know it's fucked up to say this I already know0.98
00:16:26.040that my saying this will annoy some people I can already imagine the emails I'll get the list of0.97
00:16:30.960reasons why you or someone you know is justifiably obese the trauma you've lived through in some
00:16:36.920cases food is your coping mechanism or maybe you have an eating disorder like anorexia all of these
00:16:43.200things are justifiable all of these are valid reasons to negate caring for yourself for a time0.99
00:16:49.460childhood trauma is not a life sentence holy fucking shit she's going in hard I know0.99
00:16:55.780extreme emotional pain doesn't guarantee emotional pain for the rest of your life0.99
00:17:00.680i know this is true because i am a living breathing flourishing example of someone
00:17:05.080who chooses to rise above the trauma of her past woof i know the reason i know this is true is
00:17:11.720because the world is filled with people who have it so much harder than me and so much harder than
00:17:15.680you yet they show up for their lives every single day what how do we get from the size of your body
00:17:21.540to showing up for your life. Non sequiturs. It's just a book of non sequiturs. I'm passively
00:17:26.760letting my life happen to me, everybody. You need to be healthy. You don't need to be thin.
00:17:32.200You don't need to be a certain size or shape or look good in a bikini.
00:17:38.400You need to be able to run without feeling like you're going to puke. You need to be able to walk
00:17:42.440up a flight of stairs without getting winded. You need to drink half your body weight in ounces of
00:17:46.660water every single day. You need to stretch and get good sleep and stop medicating every ache and
00:17:52.240pain. You need to stop filling your body with garbage like Diet Coke and fast food and lattes
00:17:57.500that are a million and a half calories. You need to take in fuel for your body that hasn't been
00:18:02.520processed and fuel for your mind that is positive and encouraging. Does your creator love you as
00:18:08.500you are? Yes, but he gave you a body with all of its strength, even its weaknesses as a gift.
00:18:14.180it is an offense to your soul to continue to treat yourself so badly motherfucker right the context0.98
00:18:21.580makes it so much worse it makes it so much worse it's like it's like that little paragraph is so1.00
00:18:29.380bad it's like you're not meant to be overweight that's mean but then it's like fuck your trauma0.99
00:18:34.200like it just goes it's an offense to the almighty like ah maybe you have anorexia and i guess that's0.99
00:18:44.400an excuse for a while it's fascinating to me how in this passage four or five times she bounces
00:18:50.640between you are lovely as you are and you need to change yeah it's like she can't decide she does
00:18:57.380this a lot actually where she'll just say two completely opposing ideas both as like unbreakable
00:19:03.780rules. Yeah. So she'll be like, you need to prioritize your job. You need to like get up
00:19:08.600early and like grind and like do whatever it is to like make your goals. Right. And then like one
00:19:14.660chapter later, she'll be like, you need to prioritize the people in your life. You need
00:19:19.160to make time for family. You need to make sure you're not sitting at the computer when you should
00:19:23.280be with your kids. I mean, this is sort of like what's happening with like wellness and weight
00:19:28.440loss culture at the moment right folks are aware that they can't really just spout off the same
00:19:35.300old lines about like become beautiful and like live the life you've imagined and whatever the
00:19:41.540things are right so like folks are trying to figure out how to couch that language but it's
00:19:46.560really hard to couch it because it is so bald it's this weird thing where it's like she says
00:19:53.180you don't need to be thin. You do need to be healthy. But her definition of the word healthy
00:19:58.380includes thin. Well, and also like health is an extremely relative term. Health for a type one
00:20:05.160diabetic or a person with cerebral palsy or a person with a genetic marker for cancer. All of
00:20:11.680those look like different things. So this mandate, I think people think it's like a sort of quote
00:20:18.020unquote safer thing to say, like, I don't want you to be thin. I just want you to be healthy.
00:20:21.860that's also fucked up it's hella mean i'm also like why do people have to be healthy rachel0.97
00:20:27.900why for what reason do people have to be healthy and what you're saying isn't i want you to be0.98
00:20:35.120healthy on your own terms right what you're saying is i want you to appear to conform to
00:20:41.360my definition of your health yeah yeah i hate it mike i know i hate it really bad so hard there's
00:20:50.100also this atrocious like not in a chapter about weight a chapter where she did she starts with0.68
00:20:56.220this absurd humble brag about she's out like at a happy hour with friends and she gets super drunk
00:21:01.500and then she comes home really late like midnight she promised herself that she was gonna go jogging
00:21:07.380three times that week so she like went to the basement and got on the treadmill for 30 minutes
00:21:12.280at midnight super weird but in this chapter she she asked you to imagine like a friend pam who's
00:21:18.080like every week Pam's on a different diet but like she can't stick to them and then she says like
00:21:24.720would you trust Pam if she made a commitment to you she's not going to be there for you because
00:21:29.240she can't even stick to these diets yes here's what's happening in this moment Rachel Hollis0.97
00:21:34.380is making the argument that like fat people's bodies are a reflection of their character yes0.93
00:21:40.960of their morality like explicitly period you are a bad and unreliable friend yes if you're a fat0.97
00:21:47.980person i i hate this she says y'all would you respect her this woman who starts and stops over0.98
00:21:53.340and over again would you count on pam when she committed to something or when she committed to0.98
00:21:57.840you fuck off and it's like well what is pam like rachel also i'm having a strong reaction to this0.99
00:22:04.220because my mom's name is pam so i'm like leave my fucking mom alone rachel aubrey's mom's name out1.00
00:22:09.000of your mouth come on and i think okay there's something sort of darkly fascinating to me about0.99
00:22:15.400rachel because i've known people like this people that are just naturally i think very positive and
00:22:21.480who have like a lot of energy and who are very goal oriented but also like kind of shallow like
00:22:27.720it's difficult to get them to think deeply about an issue it seems like they go through the world
00:22:33.380like constantly baffled by other people where they're just like well why don't you overcome
00:22:38.960your problems yeah this is maybe like a weird flex but i was listening to a really good know
00:22:44.060your enemy podcast the other day about ronald reagan he seems to have the same personality type
00:22:49.260where he's kind of like obsessed with positivity he's like really extroverted and really good at
00:22:54.560sort of working a room and being charming but he also doesn't have a lot of curiosity about the
00:23:00.160world and his his worldview and his beliefs and his knowledge is like an inch deep and the minute
00:23:06.280you try to penetrate beyond that and try to get him to understand something more complex
00:23:10.620he just like it's like you hit a wall this is something that i see over and over again with
00:23:15.520rachel is that like people confront her with information and she's just like i don't know
00:23:19.560about that all i know is and she's like goes back to her little talking points all i know is southern
00:23:25.380people love monograms i just think that it's like a fascinating portrait of a personality type
00:23:33.160that like it's it's easy for these people to become very successful i think if they have
00:23:38.280privileges to begin with and also reach a level of status where they physically cannot understand
00:23:45.880like the privileges or the luck or any of the other factors that got them there.
00:23:49.780Well, and in the United States in particular, we have a culture that is so hungry for that rhetoric
00:23:56.520and will affirm it at every turn that those are also people who are more likely to be platformed,
00:24:03.440right? Because that is like a story that we've gotten comfortable telling ourselves about the
00:24:09.040US, which is like, it's a place where if you put in the work, you can become anything you want.
00:24:13.720So we lift up success stories. I mean, in that way, oh, fuck, Mike, I'm blowing my own mind.0.99
00:24:18.840In that way, it's a little bit like dieting. We're lifting up the very, very, very small0.99
00:24:24.940portion of people who are exceptions to the rule, right? To be like, look, it's possible you can do
00:24:31.500it too so that everybody stays in this weird shitty hamster wheel of things that don't work
00:24:37.280yeah you lift up the rachel hollis's of the world you don't actually have to pay attention to
00:24:42.060the entrenched nature of you know poverty and like the lack of social mobility even in a quote
00:24:49.240unquote classless society blah blah blah people who break the rule allows you to keep believing
00:24:55.280that the rule doesn't exist absolutely so speaking of which i'm gonna send you one more passage oh
00:25:00.760can't wait you're gonna one of the paragraphs of this is in italics which i don't think comes
00:25:05.200through when i copy paste it so you're gonna have to guess but i think it's obvious uh is it the
00:25:09.400one that just says girl yeah she does it a lot in her book it's like girl it's like the whole
00:25:18.480paragraph okay so this this is the section where we're going to talk about the other criticism of0.66
00:25:25.840rachel which is that she's pretty privileged what i know how twist hang on roll it back
00:25:32.580okay have you spent a lifetime muting yourself for fear of what others will think are you an
00:25:40.100entrepreneur who calls your business a hobby because you worry about what your mother-in-law
00:25:44.120will say are you hesitating to go back to school because you think you're not smart enough
00:25:49.000do you hesitate to admit your dreams aloud because you're nervous about others making
00:25:53.480fun of you or judging you for your choices. Girl. I lived in fear of this for years. I worried that
00:26:01.600if you knew how much I love to work, you might call into question how I can do any of those
00:26:05.960things while being a successful mother. I've had too many people question my commitment to my
00:26:10.680children over the last 10 years, and it influenced what I came to believe about being a working
00:26:15.200woman. It was a long battle from mommy guilt to acceptance. And here's what I've decided.
00:26:21.440I refuse to teach my daughter this narrative. I absolutely refuse to raise her with the ideal
00:26:27.680that only one parent is ultimately responsible for who she will become. I will not consent to
00:26:33.180the belief that having a mother with a full-time job means that she's not loved and well cared for.
00:26:38.580There's a very good BuzzFeed article in 2018 by Laura Turner, who talks about how, like,
00:26:44.380everything that Rachel Hollis is talking about in her books, all of her obstacles are imagined
00:26:49.240obstacles she talks about like i have mommy guilt yeah she talks about how she felt really bad when
00:26:55.080she had to leave her daughter who was i believe one at the time to go on like a two-week business
00:26:59.380trip like oh everybody's going to be judging me and she thought when she mentioned her daughter
00:27:04.100to people on the trip that they would be thinking like oh she left her daughter alone and then it's
00:27:08.440like she's overcome that and now like she feels fine about balancing work and life but it's like
00:27:13.700what were the obstacles uh-huh much is made when this book is published about the fact that0.99
00:27:19.260she doesn't mention that she has a nanny until the acknowledgments at the end ah fuck man most0.95
00:27:25.420people who have kids and have to go on business trips like the problem is not mommy guilt the0.99
00:27:30.420problem is child care for three or four days right there's this excruciating chapter about
00:27:34.500the recession how she got through the recession in her third book and she talks about like there's
00:27:37.940no shame in taking a second job and like a lot of people can't take second jobs because like they
00:27:43.300have intermittent schedules at their first job and they they don't know when they're going to
00:27:48.300be working so they actually can't work more hours like there are structural reasons why people can't0.59
00:27:52.800get second jobs or they already have a second and a fucking third job now what rachel there's a good0.70
00:27:59.720review of her book by a woman named caitlin luckow who talks about reading it as somebody0.97
00:28:04.520with clinical depression uh-huh she's talking about how rachel hollis is one of her big things
00:28:09.060as choose happiness she sells t-shirts that say just choose happiness caitlin says as an individual
00:28:14.640with depression nothing is harder to hear from others than hearing that you can just choose
00:28:18.500happiness and that it will cure you frankly there is no cure for a mental illness there are practices
00:28:24.000and medications that can help you process and live with it but nothing will get rid of it permanently
00:28:28.000certainly not just a simple mind shift hearing these messages of choosing happiness can be so
00:28:32.800difficult to hear because people with depression or other mental illnesses can't choose that we
00:28:37.900don't have the luxury to be able to. It can make us think, well, what am I doing wrong? Why can't
00:28:42.820I just choose happiness? It further perpetuates feelings of self-loathing, which in the end
00:28:47.180can actually be deadly. As she's talking about like, just choose happiness. I'm thinking about
00:28:51.800the people who I have known who have not had the opportunity to choose happiness. Like,
00:28:57.480hey man, say it to a trans person who has suicidal ideation and can't access like gender
00:29:03.320affirming health care. Right. Say it to a person who's experiencing homelessness. Just choose1.00
00:29:07.760happiness. Right. Drive an Uber. Like, no. Yes. I would like you to try that shit out on like 10
00:29:14.640different people with radically different life experiences than yours. Yeah, literally anyone0.99
00:29:19.580just speak to any real person. Go for it, Rachel. Yeah. Try it out. Come back to me.
00:29:23.540So the last aspect of her book that I want to talk about before we get to the downfall
00:29:26.600is I kind of couldn't help myself. I wanted this to be like a motivational guru tea episode with
00:29:33.140like no science and like no academic stuff but then this is a passage in rachel's third book
00:29:38.740she says back in the 1960s a neuroscientist named paul d mcclain formulated a model for something
00:29:46.260called the triune brain theory have you heard of this the triune brain theory no not ever this is
00:29:52.280where we get the phrase lizard brain oh and it's like it's exactly what it sounds like so the idea
00:29:57.200is that there's parts of your brain and these are actual physical parts of your brain that you can
00:30:01.420see there's kind of like the inner nugget that is the literal lizard brain that is like our least
00:30:07.360evolved form of thought and then the layer on top of that is like our monkey brains basically
00:30:13.760Rachel calls it mammal brains she talks about having like a deer in the backyard it can kind
00:30:18.680of learn to trust you or like the way that like dogs have personalities and dogs are capable of
00:30:23.380like much more complex thought than like a lizard the third layer of our brain is the human brain
00:30:29.220that's like the higher order thinking that's all the outside part of our brain like all the
00:30:32.600wrinkly stuff that's literally what she says in the book i wow all the wrinkly stuff and that's
00:30:39.680of course where we're like we do the higher order stuff right where it's like writing and like
00:30:43.640socrates and shakespeare and all that kind of stuff i do like thinking about like the gray
00:30:48.660wrinkly outer layer and then just like i don't know what like a soft cream center yeah i was
00:30:53.920I was thinking like a little lizard inside with like levers.1.00
00:40:41.900i i feel torn about this because her her second scandal is a plagiarism scandal oh did somebody
00:40:50.600else say this yeah so she apparently this is nearly identical to a quote from another motivational
00:40:56.520speaker named jim roan oh so there's this whole there's this buzzfeed article comes out and it
00:41:01.680sort of like catalogs all of the the like sketchy plagiarism that she's done like it's there's
00:41:08.280obviously i i'm not defending plagiarism but like every single one of the quotes is so vacuous
00:41:14.820that like i i have trouble getting worked up about this one of the other ones that she's
00:41:19.640attributed to herself is the phrase ambition is not a dirty word what which i guess is like a 2008
00:41:26.140self-help book title who thinks it's a what another one is someone else's opinion of you
00:41:31.580is none of your business which she stole from rupaul which is weird but then rupaul stole it0.96
00:41:39.020from the title of a 1979 self-help book right like all of these are so sort of like so dumb
00:41:46.500gestures at wittiness they're not cute they're not cute and they're not especially insightful
00:41:51.780and even if they were i would be really shocked all the hell if like 2019 was the first time
00:41:59.160someone said if you really want something you'll find a way and if you don't you'll find an excuse
00:42:03.320but then okay but the really bad one so like the legitimately indefensible one is in april 2020
00:42:09.560she posts on instagram a graphic that just says still i rise what but it doesn't have any
00:42:15.600attribution come on so she didn't say that it was from her but like considering how many quotes she
00:42:21.680puts out that are from her like it it doesn't mention maya angelou right there's a reputation
00:42:27.000building yeah so this is like her first real like scandal that goes mainstream i love these like
00:42:34.180quote-unquote cancellations because so often it's not necessarily about what the person did
00:42:39.720in the first place it's about how they respond so i'm going to send you rachel's apology and
00:42:47.260you're gonna read it oh god oh no it's good quote this morning i found out that my social team
00:42:53.240posted a graphic on my instagram yesterday that said still i rise that is obviously an immortal
00:42:59.780line from a maya angelou poem only no credit was given to her i immediately deleted the post but
00:43:05.740i wanted to make sure and publicly apologize while i didn't create or post the graphic
00:43:10.200i'm the leader of the team that did so and i accept full responsibility for their actions
00:43:16.780wow i can't imagine how deeply hurtful it is to the african-american community to see the words
00:43:22.740of your heroes used without credit. This has happened to you far too often. And I hate I
00:43:28.240literally hate that anything produced by my company added to your pain. I heard once that
00:43:34.160the only real apology was one where you don't make an excuse. So I won't three sentences after
00:43:39.320making two excuses. I'll just blame it on my employees. Yes. I'm deeply sorry. I understand
00:43:46.840that this post without credit is not a little thing to you. This is death by 1000 cuts. This
00:43:52.040is the millionth type of incident like this you've experienced this is not okay i apologize
00:43:57.020sincerely we will do better thoughts you know what this reminds me of is this reminds me of
00:44:02.340her church talk where she's like you're beautiful just as you are now here's how to lose weight
00:44:06.700that's the thing it's just like completely contradictory sentences right next to each
00:44:12.040other basically i didn't do it but i understand that saying i didn't do it won't be well received
00:44:17.420so I'm gonna take the blame for other people who did it congratulations me exactly it's like I'm
00:44:24.100trying to rise above it and be like I'm ultimately not responsible for it but I'll take responsibility
00:44:28.900anyway like wow Rachel it's not a world ender right you know what I mean like nothing about0.79
00:44:34.620this no one's gonna live or die as a result of fucking Rachel Hollis posting an uncredited0.94
00:44:39.920Maya Angelou quote to her Instagram feed like every part of that sentence is nonsense but like0.99
00:44:47.240it is so egregious and the apology is so aggressively bad there's also this is like
00:44:55.180the most 2021 detail of this according to an anonymous former employee who was interviewed
00:45:02.860by the youtuber savvy writes books who does all these videos deep diving into rachel hollis
00:45:07.840in this interview the employee said that somebody got fired for this and the person who got fired0.91
00:45:14.660was like a woman of color i don't know that i needed anybody to get fired over this rachel0.84
00:45:20.500right it just is weird now this was a call for her to work on her own whiteness not a call for
00:45:27.620her to fire a person of color i don't think that's what anybody wanted rachel but again we don't we
00:45:34.700don't 100 know that this is true so we want to be yes totally totally totally but either way
00:45:40.460right like the things that would be meaningful anti-racist accountability i'm guessing are not
00:45:45.300things that have shown up no on her feed since then no there's also okay this i wasn't going to
00:45:50.880mention this but like i got obsessed with this so in this summer george floyd black lives matter
00:45:55.760protests rachel hollis doesn't post anything finally she puts out like a really long post
00:46:01.700she's using the metaphor of like tomatoes she's like these are tomatoes i grew in my garden
00:46:05.360they grow in the soil and they absorb all the nutrients from the soil and if you're a white
00:46:09.400person in america the soil that you grow up in is white supremacy and racism and you've probably0.99
00:46:14.040absorbed a lot of nutrients from that soil even if you're not aware of it and one of the fucking0.96
00:46:19.380weirdest things that she does in this is like she's she's trying to talk about the legacy of0.90
00:46:23.840racism and like how long racism has gone on in america and she says like think about it everybody
00:46:29.500we had racism for 400 years in america and we've learned from malcolm gladwell that it takes 10,000
00:46:36.780hours to master something no i'm not fucking kidding then she breaks it down she's like that's
00:46:42.820like i don't know 6 000 days or whatever it is and then she's like 10 10 000 hours of those days0.93
00:46:48.960michael i'm going to die here she does all this weird math and then she ends up she's like that
00:46:55.060means we've mastered racism 72 000 times or something she's trying but it's just like rachel
00:47:02.680why are you doing math also why are you bringing malcolm gladwell into this i know what it's like
00:47:11.340so much it's like oh my god you know according to the secret we could manifest our way out like
00:47:20.420what also what's so weird is because usually when public figures and influencers are decidedly
00:47:26.640silent on political stuff it usually means that they're like secretly conservatives yeah but i
00:47:31.300think rachel is secretly a liberal do you think oh absolutely because she she went out of her way
00:47:37.260in her first book to have a like i'm cool with gay people chapter huh honestly like by the standards
00:47:42.720of like us in 2018 or whatever is not you know clearing a high bar but like it was a christian
00:47:48.620publisher and the publisher asked her to remove the chapter oh wow and she wouldn't do it wow
00:47:53.080and this is the other piece of evidence this is man i'm struggling to say this without like a lot
00:47:59.440of like ridicule in my voice her husband has a tattoo that says ally no because he's he's on like
00:48:08.780boards of charities like lgbt charities and stuff in la so like that's another reason why i think0.98
00:48:14.060that they're like kind of kind of woke but also like kind of like it's sufferable ally fucking0.88
00:48:19.440tattoo i mean like so this is like a little pet peeve of mine you don't get to decide if you're0.95
00:48:26.280an ally to a community they get to decide wait should i have my tattoo removed yeah sorry this
00:48:31.940is very awkward i'm sending you a gift certificate for laser tattoo removal mike but like being an
00:48:37.800ally isn't just being like i don't intend gay people harm and also like anyone who's that like
00:48:43.320self-congratulatory i'm always just a little suspicious of like if that's like a big part
00:48:47.580of their identity like i'm nice yeah totally it feels more like a message to other straight people
00:48:52.800than it is a message to gay people like that's how i perceive it is like you you want to show
00:48:56.300off to other straight people that you have like the cred of the gays you know what it's like oh
00:49:00.060my god mike it's like when we were in the sort of fight for marriage and like brad pitt and
00:49:06.280angelina jolie did the thing of like we're not getting married until everyone can get married
00:49:11.160and then a bunch of other straight cis people did that thinking that that like did something0.99
00:49:17.220yeah like accomplished like someone was counting all the straight people who didn't get married
00:49:21.700which wasn't happening i know where i'm like you could have just written a check you could
00:49:25.380have just gone and knocked on some doors we want your money brad oh there are things you could have
00:49:30.280done so the next sub downfall before the real downfall this is another weird one in june of
00:49:37.2802020 rachel and dave announced that they're getting divorced uh-huh this is a one that i
00:49:43.320feel kind of weird about because they've both received a lot of criticism for like basically
00:49:48.380putting on this nice face to the world like we we looked at their instagram photos right like we're
00:49:52.740this happy couple and everything's great and they were doing they were doing a daily feed together
00:49:57.540where they would like wake up and every morning they would sort of live stream every day as like
00:50:01.600a couple like it's us in bed hanging out and then they said in their divorce announcement that like
00:50:06.540they had been having problems as early as 2017 and had been working on it they've received criticism
00:50:12.160for like keeping that a secret which i honestly think is like a little bit unfair i think if
00:50:16.640people want to have like secret marital troubles that's fine but also people have also pointed out
00:50:22.860that they were also selling marital counseling they were doing these weekend retreats and
00:50:29.160charging eighteen hundred dollars for people to come and get marital advice from them oh and they
00:50:35.420would do these like how to have a healthy relationship seminars and like they were
00:50:39.660extremely explicit in the marketing for these seminars they're like we're not licensed counselors
00:50:44.940we don't have any expertise in this but we're in a great marriage and then it's not so great
00:50:49.900yeah and it's like this weird thing where it's like i feel weird about semi sort of criticizing
00:50:55.060somebody for getting divorced or criticizing a public figure for keeping a like personal thing
00:51:00.060personal which i think is totally fine but then it's like you're literally selling something that
00:51:05.300wasn't true for this entire time like why why were people listening to your marital advice then
00:51:11.580I feel a little bit like about influencers having their relationships be sort of part of their brand. Similarly to how I feel when people get like matching tattoos. Oh, yeah. Which is like, maybe it works out. I know. In which case, congratulations. And if it doesn't, this is gonna be like a thing for you.
00:51:29.720i know i mean it really does seem like they kind of painted themselves into a little bit of a
00:51:34.180corner right by like having live streams that are that frequent and that regular by having sort of
00:51:41.220this like cornerstone of their work be defined around the success of their relationship it's
00:51:46.680another one of those ones where i'm like i don't care like i don't care that you got divorced but
00:51:51.580like maybe don't sell your learn to have a perfect relationship from us packages for a couple years
00:51:57.820It's just so weird when influencers have like their families, like their kids are in a lot of their Instagram posts too.
00:52:03.920These families are also like an economic unit at the same time.
00:52:07.480Yeah, I don't really have anything to say about any particular influencers like relationship, their romantic relationship or their parenting or any of that sort of stuff.
00:52:17.520but i do it makes me nervous on their behalf when that becomes part of their brand because i'm like
00:52:24.420you're gonna have things happen that sort of contradict your quote-unquote brand yeah they're
00:52:29.760then tying this sense of like a quote-unquote perfect personal life yeah to their like ability
00:52:37.240to make money and to who they're answerable to and when and all of that like that's the stuff
00:52:42.460that just like i just get vicarious like hives from thinking about it so this i mean it's part
00:52:48.540of the downfall because this is like uh they receive a huge wave of criticism for this that
00:52:52.200they basically the the narrative starts to form that like they're scammers which i think is like
00:52:56.300on some level fair yeah so i just want to pause here before we circle back to the infamous tiktok
00:53:01.740i think the reason why i struggle to get worked up about any of these scandals that are part of
00:53:07.740the downfall is because like her written work is so bad oh buddy this is something that i've seen
00:53:14.980with so many people where it's like they're actual like the core of their work the publicly
00:53:19.400available stuff that they do is odious but then like what sort of takes them down is some weird
00:53:26.500legalistic technical rule that they broke yeah that makes sense to me like this is such a weird
00:53:32.740amalgam of things that don't matter and things that now do matter because we've decided they
00:53:38.240matter this is what's so weird and why i was tearing my hair out for so much of the research
00:53:43.000on this i'm like people are mad at her for saying something mean about an mlm like her book is
00:53:49.820terrible and like i'm supposed to be mad at her like yes hypocrisy fine but like this is what
00:53:56.580we're mad at her about yeah it just is like over and over again i'm like i'm reading through her
00:54:00.220book. And I'm like, why are we talking about plagiarizing right now? Like her book is bad.
00:54:06.080I don't know, man. Again, it doesn't matter. But we've decided it does. So it does.
00:54:10.120So this brings us back around to the infamous TikTok.
00:54:14.880Yeah. So the infamous TikTok was Rachel Hollis saying that she had said something sort of
00:54:20.980publicly about like there was somebody who came to her house twice a week to clean her toilets,
00:54:26.100I believe was the phrasing in the toilet. And then she made a tick tock saying like people
00:54:31.880are criticizing me because that's unrelatable. But yeah, I am unrelatable. And I've worked
00:54:36.580really hard to be unrelatable. I worked my ass off to be unrelatable. I'm unrelatable in the
00:54:42.280way that a lot of women that I admire are unrelatable throughout history, like Harriet
00:54:46.380Tubman. Yeah, is the thing that she said, good God. And especially now knowing that that came1.00
00:54:53.800on the heels of the still i rise thing is just like yeah mind-blowingly poor decision making
00:55:01.320on her it's bad so the tiktok happens and people are pissed it seems she lost a hundred thousand
00:55:08.580instagram followers she had to postpone her conference it was supposed to be in may but
00:55:13.500they had to postpone it until i think it was like last month because like nobody was signing up
00:55:18.080because everybody was so mad at her and it seems like target might have pulled a product line like
00:55:22.760it's just like things just like everything deflated very quickly and just just like with
00:55:28.360the Maya Angelou thing the apology this is like a master class and like how not to apologize for
00:55:34.680something so you are you're a Rachel Hollis dramatic reader so I'm gonna send the entire
00:55:41.020text to you okay we got quite a bit of text here look how long it is quote I made a post last week
00:55:47.840that was upsetting to people and even though it was never my intent I own that it was and I
00:55:52.200apologize was my post upsetting because i said i have someone who cleans my house twice a week
00:55:57.620this is this is my favorite thing she's like are you mad at me because somebody cleans my house0.93
00:56:04.820no rachel no no one's mad that you're employing someone no one fucking cares you have a cleaner0.92
00:56:12.680congratulations job creator it's like it's like a little kid you're like don't hit your brother0.90
00:56:22.500and they're like oh i'm not allowed to wave my arm through the air or something you're like
00:56:26.980that's not why i'm mad oh my god okay boof was my post upsetting because i said i have someone
00:56:34.620who cleans my house twice a week i've talked a lot about this over the years i have a nanny
00:56:39.640I have someone who helps with cleaning.
00:56:41.600I have a team at work who helped build this business.
00:56:44.480It's crucial that I keep talking about it.
00:56:47.320I want you to know that it's a group effort.
00:56:50.040Was my post upsetting because I mentioned some of my favorite women in history?
00:57:06.780They'd be like, this is weird, but okay.
00:57:09.180what are you talking about? This one is even harder for me because those women are the most1.00
00:57:13.640badass I could even think of. Someone on my team said, quote, I think people believe you're1.00
00:57:19.300comparing yourself to them. There is no comparison to believe that because I mentioned them, I am
00:57:24.960comparing myself to them is ridiculous. Do I aspire to be as brave as fierce to live life on
00:57:30.880my own terms and hopefully inspire other women to do the same? Hell yes. But I cannot now or ever0.91
00:57:37.540compare myself to those women and i don't want to i don't want to try and be the next fill in
00:57:42.780the blank i'd rather try and be the first me jesus i didn't respond to these things on friday when i
00:57:50.840heard people were upset i listened to my team instead of my gut i listened when they told me
00:57:55.100not to respond to let it blow over i listened when they said they would monitor the situation
00:58:00.180which meant monitor comments because people had been noticing that comments like angry comments
00:58:05.520by like women of color were like disappearing oh god so this is rachel being like my team told me0.90
00:58:11.380to ignore it and they deleted a bunch of the comments but also like we just went through this1.00
00:58:16.980with maya angelou we just did this why are you doing the in rachel's defense she does have an
00:58:23.940entire book called girl stop apologizing so it makes sense that she's bad at this but also like
00:58:29.420listen it's so bizarre to be like i want you to know that this is a group effort and i need to0.70
00:58:34.600be better about saying it and i'm like you've built a whole fucking self-help book empire on0.61
00:58:39.600you don't need anybody else you can do it yourself i'm like acknowledging that it's a group effort0.79
00:58:45.740would mean reorienting your self-help work to focus on interdependence right and focus on0.99
00:58:53.280building systems that do right by people right not focusing on telling people to like fuck the0.98
00:58:58.700haters and you do what you want and rise and grind and like right and then i guess it was0.54
00:59:03.940like a day later or something she then deleted that because like obviously people were mad and
00:59:09.260then she then like i don't know a couple more days went by and then she released like a another
00:59:12.980apology that is like slightly better we're not going to read it because it's also long but it's
00:59:17.220like i acknowledge my privilege i caused pain to women of color like she finally was like specific
00:59:23.120about like acknowledging like what she actually did and she basically said like i'm gonna do
00:59:28.860better something like it it was like a better celebrity apology but it was like a pretty
00:59:33.080standard celebrity apology and as people do like she went dark for a while but then like she's now
00:59:39.580kind of gone back to posting things and like that's that's basically where we are now that she
00:59:43.500just had her conference and it was virtual like half virtual half people in the room but it seems
00:59:49.460like there weren't that many people in the room like it seems like they didn't even sell out like
00:59:53.280the much smaller venue they had because of covid i don't know at this point it seems like the air
00:59:59.640has kind of gone out of her to some extent although what's interesting is if you read the
01:00:05.120comments on her apology post they're all from conservatives saying like i'm disgusted that
01:00:11.360you're giving in to the woke mob oh lord given who her audience is some of the popularity that
01:00:18.000she's losing might be because of her apology she had to make the implicit explicit right she had0.98
01:00:23.300to say like i've harmed women of color like she said all these things that like you can't say
01:00:29.240and remain an apolitical public figure in america at this point yeah and like i mean what does it
01:00:35.440mean for the air to come out of what she's doing right like she's still got 1.6 million followers0.99
01:00:41.540yes presumably she still has you know pretty decent staff team working around her she might0.86
01:00:49.180be losing out on opportunities but i'm guessing that she is still significantly financially
01:00:54.460solvent oh yeah in these moments when we're talking about like people being canceled it feels really
01:00:59.660important to me to be really precise about like what does that mean for them this is i mean this
01:01:04.000to me is like the real ending is that like nobody ever really gets canceled and like if you're not
01:01:08.940somebody who follows instagram and twitter obsessively you have no idea that any of this
01:01:14.260is going on yeah i can see her like kind of going down one level and not being like a top tier
01:01:18.560influencer but being like a mid-tier influencer but like yeah she's gonna continue to make huge
01:01:23.800sums of money and like be an influential person for her audience i also will say like there is
01:01:29.140something about like this phrasing of like the woke mob is a truly wild way to talk about like
01:01:35.260people of color want you not to say racist things i know to and about them don't uh don't go to her
01:01:41.620comments right now i can't think of a thing that i'm less likely to do yeah please don't go check
01:01:47.580the comments on our rachel hollis posts on instagram so uh that was it that was that was
01:01:52.720our journey our long and winding journey through rachel hollis i'm exhausted i know me too i'm
01:01:59.260exhausted like not because of anything particular to rachel hollis but because of the ways in which
01:02:05.420it just feels like she's drawing a bunch of our existing cultural logic to its natural conclusion
01:02:11.940yeah she's saying it out loud there is something here that feels really interesting about the ways
01:02:17.660in which white middle-class American womanhood is centered in body positive spaces and in
01:02:26.680wellness spaces in this very uncritical kind of way that like part of the story of this Rachel0.99
01:02:34.380Hollis downfall is just like when you just scratch at the surface of the centering of those
01:02:40.520that like extremely narrow set of identities it all just falls apart and she's this parallel1.00
01:02:47.240trajectory of like what has happened to that rhetoric since 2015. Like there was a time
01:02:51.180when you could hold all of these contradictions and nobody would point them out. And I think what
01:02:55.920Rachel has come up against in 2021 is just like these contradictions can't hold. Right. You can't
01:03:01.280keep telling people like work hard, but also like parent hard, love your body, but also change.
01:03:08.160Like you just can't maintain that cognitive dissonance for that long. Yeah, that's right.
01:03:12.680And that there is, you know, outside of Rachel Hollis per se, I think there's this sort of like, growing realization that's happening. It's one that I've been through. It's one that you've been through of like, oh, wait a minute, maybe we're in a real The Emperor Has No Clothes kind of moment here.
01:03:29.100I also, I want to end with something that really struck me reading so much of what Rachel has
01:03:35.520written. This is an excerpt from a Christian blogger who reviewed very negatively Rachel's
01:03:41.480book. She's talking about how Rachel says to like chase after your dreams no matter what.
01:03:46.240And she says, what is Rachel Hollis's dream? Jesus never called us to chase after power,
01:03:52.020money, and fame. He actually had quite a bit to say about those things. He called us to lay our
01:03:56.620pursuit of all that stuff down and follow him he said whoever finds his life will lose it and
01:04:01.920whoever loses his life for my sake will find it matthew 10 39 and i'm not in the business of like
01:04:08.320ending our show with bible quotes typically but one of the things i noticed in everything that
01:04:14.260rachel has written and said over the years is there's almost nothing in there about morality
01:04:18.520you know she says in her famous like bikini photo talk she ends it by saying that like you know what's
01:04:25.120on the outside doesn't matter what's on the inside that matters but like nothing anywhere in her books
01:04:30.220tells you about how to be a good person on the inside yeah that to me is like the biggest lost
01:04:34.860opportunity and something that i see so much in in various other self-help books i've read over
01:04:38.640the years it's all self stuff yeah like part of being a person is like finding out what problems
01:04:44.580there are in the world and like helping other people and like how to help other people and how
01:04:49.120to serve yourself spiritually and how to be a good person is actually really hard yeah and there's not
01:04:55.100that much advice about that. Right. Totally. Like, what would it look like to try and be a better
01:04:59.860mom and also let yourself off the hook when you fall short of what you're, you know, what you're
01:05:04.260aiming for? Or what would it look like to talk about integrating volunteer work and, you know,
01:05:10.480like community building work into your family routine and getting your kids in the habit of
01:05:15.620volunteering? Yeah, there are things that are sort of in the pocket of what she's aiming for
01:05:20.700that could have mobilized quite a bit more quite a bit further and could have mobilized more people0.96
01:05:27.640to be of service either to others or to themselves and not to like fucking capitalism which is really0.92
01:05:34.320what it seems like is happening here yeah 100 it's just a restatement of the existing ideology0.93
01:05:39.240as if it's like as if it's a revelation when it's just like no you're just saying things that like
01:05:43.580people mostly already believe ultimately right and it's not like a radical thing to be like i
01:05:48.560want money and i want the things that i want and i don't want to have to wait for them and rachel
01:05:52.520would have been really good at giving advice because she's southern and southern people are1.00
01:05:56.640super moral the rubik's cube of my week has been why the fuck would rachel hollis lie about being1.00
01:06:03.960southern like i can't stop turning that over in my brain and i and you're right i don't care0.72
01:06:13.260but now it's all i can think about and it's a very confusing combination
01:06:18.100i'm so glad i've done this to you this is my only goal with the show0.98
01:06:23.260it's just to make you think about the dumbest shit all day now i have to get0.99
01:06:27.120you to start watching bachelor in paradise and then we'll be1.00