I have officially decided to change the name of my "Reading Right Now" series to Shanon's Book Review. I feel like it is a better description of what I am actually doing with these posts since some (many) of these books, especially in the beginning, I may have read a long time ago.
Now on to my review of "Girl Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be" by; Rachel Hollis. I read this book in January, so it hasn't been a super long time ago and gave it a 4* rating on Goodreads but really I feel like it deserves more like 3 stars. I didn't write a review on Goodreads at the time (and let's be honest, my Goodreads reviews are usually pretty brief) so I thought it would be nice to document my thoughts here.
Overall I liked the the book. Hollis has a no-nonsense attitude and is very transparent about her own flaws. I am sure she is a very fun person to hang out with and I would like to be her friend IRL; which is probably why her book and website and entire brand are so successful (in addition to all of the hard work she has put in.) The book is easy to read, well written and contains a lot of good advice about life. But I also felt like parts of the book were misleading and disingenuous.
Overall the lies that Hollis focuses on are, in fact, lies that many women hear from society and from themselves and tend to internalize and believe. Hollis does a great job of focusing on the importance of hard work and dedication to achieve success, and doesn't sugar coat the fact that success does not come overnight and that there are sacrifices we must make along the way. Where she looses me is with the Christian themes she has woven through the book and the more rah-rah feel good on the surface one-liners.
I am a Christian and I often enjoy reading Christian literature, studying devotional texts, and even reading "Christian Self Help" books-a category I feel this book was largely marketed as. But this is NOT a Christian Self Help book, and therein lies the problem. This is a book written by a woman about how she achieved success and that woman just happens to be a Christian so she talks about God in places. Why do I have a problem with that? Because she also talks about how an expense purse is a marker of success and that all religions are equally right. While I understand that different individuals, Christians, and Christian Churches interpret the scripture in different ways I also felt that much of her theology was flawed at best and by marketing this book as a Christian book it is misleading to both Christians and non-Christians about what the Bible has to say about these topics.
Some of the things Hollis gets right
- We are not perfect, we are flawed individuals and we need God's grace. (My takeaway: It's ok that we aren't perfect, but we need to do our best.)
- We should love people who are different than us. (My takeaway: Jesus ate dinner with the tax collector, with the harlots, with religious bigots, there is no reason why we as Christians should not be friends with people who's sin looks different than ours, it is just important that we keep in mind that we are also not perfect and that we continually work to correct those sinful acts and share God's word with those people in a loving way.)
What she gets wrong
- Hollis credits her self and hard work and self love for much of her success and wisdom throughout her life, she never credits her belief in God or his influence in inspiring that self love or work ethic. One could easily make the argument that her presentation of this is a form of self idolatry.
- Hollis puts way too much emphasis on material wealth and status symbols as measures of success. (See above about the $1,000 purse) Success is not measured by material possessions. When Jesus says "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" he is not saying rich people with lots of material goods can't go to heaven. He is talking about how difficult it is for them to put the focus of their life on God and what matters over those material possessions in order for them to go to heaven.
- Hollis tells you to never take no for an answer / to never give up on your dreams. This is bull from a Christian perspective. Sometimes God tells us NO, hard work isn't going to change his mind any more so than it will change your mom's mind when she tells you not to touch a hot stove.
- Hollis quotes a verse in Hebrews about the marriage bed and says "the things that happen in my bed with my husband cannot be weird or bad or wrong" and that is not what this verse is saying -- AT ALL. I"m not saying a married couple should only have missionary style intercourse for the purpose of procreating as the good lord intended, I'm saying that when Hebrews says we should "let the marriage bed be undefiled" we are being told to keep our marriage beds pure, not that because we are married the bed remains pure regardless of what we do.
- Hollis tells us to take care of and save ourselves, that no one else will do it for us. While it is important to take care of yourself from a biblical perspective God is there to ease our burdens, our husbands, family, and close friends are there to lighten the load. No one individual is responsible for doing all the work themselves, in fact there is an entire passage of scripture that people like to quote about being equally yoked with your spouse--this literally means sharing the load!
If you Google "Girl Wash Your Face - Negative Reviews" you will be bombarded with results accusing Hollis of taking advantage of her white privilege or purposely "preaching false gospel". Personally, I don't think either of those things are intentional. I think that Hollis believes every spiritual reference she makes is well founded, she is simply wrong, and as far as her "white privilege" goes, Hollis did not grow up in an upper middle class white neighborhood. She worked hard to get out of a crappy childhood situation though it is apparent that sometime she forgets how hard/impossible it is for the people who come from similar places to get the help they need no matter how hard they try.
My reflections on this book have totally swayed my initial opinion enough to make me go back and give the book 3 stars instead of 4 on Goodreads - overall I do think a solid 3 stars is probably what it deserves. The book is well written and engaging but I think it is one sided and flawed enough that the reader should take caution before picking it up.
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