Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals (Girl, Wash Your Face)
Positive things I got out of this book and/or things I am glad she said
– Rachel discusses how as children we pick up on the behaviors that are going to get us attention, which we generally equate to love. – Letting other people’s support of you/appreciation of you determine how you embrace yourself or live your life is just stupid. – She actually addressed feminism and how we culture little boys and girls as children to become the grown men who can actually function in society and grown women who are crippled by the idea that their worth is found in how good they are for other people. “- I honestly loved her bit about guilt & shame, specifically in reference to the religious community she grew up in and how it translated into her sex life as an adult.
– You’re allowed to do things that inconvenience other people. My first gut reaction is to get defensive of the moms she’s speaking to, but I really do believe this for most people most of the time, and I think this is one of those things that you need someone to tough love you on.
Little things I was not personally a fan of
– She is a wealthy woman, and it makes her extremely unrelatable. At one point she said, “You know how when you meet with a nutritionist for the first time and they have you write down everything you eat in a week? “ I actually laughed out loud at the idea of her thinking hiring a nutritionist is relatable content.
Problematic things that are objectively not okay in this book
– Rachel doesn’t seem to realize that 90% of the things she says are extremely ableist and harmful to people with chronic illness, mental illness, and/or disabilities. – Rachel is obsessed with weight, appearance, exercise, and body size. She summarizes being overweight as being not the best version of yourself and not the best mom you could be. “It’s so simple to lose weight.
It’s so simple to get in shape. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. “ – further reinforcing that if you’re overweight it’s because you’re lazy, shortsighted, and you don’t have the willpower to look attractive. And my favorite – “There are no overweight animals in nature. “ Literally RIGHT after she says that it doesn’t matter what size you are or what your weight is, she says, “There are no overweight animals in nature.” and “The only animals that are overweight are the ones that live in our homes. Pets are overweight.
You are a powerful, beautiful, bold woman, and you will treat yourself as such. “ I truly have NO words. Still I have no words for this woman’s opinion of larger bodies. Several times she’ll tell you not to live in the “I’m too fat” feelings, and encourages you to change your mind set by writing yourself a letter about all the times your body was incredible, but then she tells you a story about how much she hated her post-baby boobs so instead of learning body positivity, she spent thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. There’s nothing inherently wrong with plastic surgery, but be straight up about whether or not your solution to hating your body is a healthy perspective/mindset shift OR if it’s just doing whatever it takes to make your body look like the idea you have in your head.
There was a whole rant in the book about how disappointed she was in some celebrity for not acknowledging they had help with raising kids and running a business, and she talks a lot about all of the professional help they have around the house and with the kids, but still in other places it felt like she just doesn’t get it. She talks about how when she wanted to start her wedding planning business, she just went and got an unpaid internship and dealt with abuse from clients for a long time so she could learn the skills and network. I don’t know about any of you, but I couldn’t afford the sacrifice of time, and I don’t even have children. She continues to talk about how she built her business with only hard work, hustle, and a Google search, but also takes the time to point out all the people who helped her in the early stages of her business, even going so far as to say that no one is truly self-made.
– Rachel Hollis has a major problem with stealing people’s intellectual property. I counted at least 15 quotes in this book that she pretended were her own idea. No attribution, no citing, no reference to the person who originally said the phrase. – Rachel has a serious problem with the working class, and it’s not okay to toss your mom under the bus for making you boxed cake every year for your birthday.
– She states in her section about her mom leaving her dad that it was essentially ridiculous for her mom to move out because “you cannot assert your independence if you don’t have the financial means to back it up.” I don’t have the time or energy to go into how destructive this is as an idea for women in abusive relationships, but it’s severely disappointing that she’d say something like this without thinking it through and that none of her very well paid editors caught this massive mistake. There are other ways she could have communicated the same general idea if she really wanted to talk about how traumatic it was for her to not be wealthy as a child, she could have done that. Instead, she tossed out a careless statement that can and will be used to make women in abusive relationships feel like they cannot leave if they don’t have financial independence to do so, and that’s definitely not something we need more of in the world. – She states that you can go cold turkey on addiction if your why is strong enough, and that’s not great.
She doesn’t understand addiction or mental illness and continues to pretend she is the equivalent of a mental health professional and continues to spew the garbage that if you only have a strong enough willpower you can get rid of any mental illness or addiction you may have. There were some positive things, but I think the negative and destructive ideas she continues to push at her readers are too bad for me to recommend this book in good conscience.
