Girl, Bye, You’re Just Toxic White Feminism (Rachel Hollis)

Samantha Jackson
4 min readApr 7, 2021

Rachel Hollis is problematic AF. If you don’t know, according to Wikipedia: “Rachel Hollis is an American author, motivational speaker and blogger. Her first self-help book Girl, Wash Your Face — since its release in February 2018 — has maintained a spot in the top 10 best-selling books in the country for seven months, held the top spot for 12 of those weeks and has sold more than 880,000 copies in the United States. It was the second-most popular book of 2018 on Amazon.”

In a short video, Hollis refers to a livestream were she mentioned a “sweet woman” who comes to her house to “clean the toilets.” Many commenters reacted and told Hollis she was “privileged AF” and “unrelatable.”

Perhaps taking her own advice and not apologizing, Rachel acknowledged her privilege, but Hollis made the situation worse by not only calling herself “unrelatable,” but also mentioned the names of other women (mostly women of color) she found “unrelatable” just like her, including Harriet Tubman, RGB, Oprah, and Frida Kahlo. And, blaming her team for her various blunders.

“Don’t let Rachel Hollis fool you with ‘I’m not trying to be relatable.’ After a year of intense public discourse on race, privilege, and systemic oppression, she chose to use her platform to peddle the myth of meritocracy and pander to her target market: whiteness and privilege,” wrote writer and podcaster Jen Kinney.

I can thank both my parents for the fact that I don’t look down on other people. My dad introduced me to a lady in poverty with AIDS in the 80s who was patient of his and it profoundly changed my life to see the obstacles she had to go through. My mom always talked to everyone as they were equals from attorneys to the cleaning lady at the mall.

Various members of my family have had a housekeeper on occasion, but we’ve always thought of it as a convenience thing and not “we work harder than you”. I hope Rachel’s housekeeper quits.

“Rachel Hollis might be able to afford a housekeeper bc she ‘gets up at 4am and works her ass off every day’, but I can almost guarantee that…

Samantha Jackson

community organizer / intersectional feminist / Take That & NKOTB fan / fashion enthusiast