Rachel Hollis is back.
The self-help author and Christian influencer is creeping back onto social media after her latest controversy in April. Hollis compared herself to Harriet Tubman and other world-changing women of color by saying they’re “unrelatable” like her — when: 1. She is certainly not like any of those women and 2. Her entire Brand™ was built on being relatable.
In addition to returning to Instagram with photos of dandelions and sidewalk chalk, Hollis also quietly dropped a YouTube video this week that raised alarm bells to those familiar with her work. The video contains a seemingly innocuous story about Hollis’s first kiss since her divorce:
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But at around 6:22 in the video, Hollis says, “I don’t know a lot about relationships.”
This is coming from someone who charged couples $1,800 for a relationship retreat.
Hollis, author of the bestselling advice books Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing, isn’t a stranger to the cycle of getting into hot water and wading in it until she thinks the internet forgot about it. Throughout her career, Hollis has been criticized for being a bad boss; plagiarising Maya Angelou and others; aligning herself with multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes; and spewing toxic positivity.
These separate instances — plagiarism, MLMs, toxic positivity, “unrelatable” — coalesce into critics proclaiming Hollis a fraud. Even her most diehard fans questioned her credibility when Rachel and Dave Hollis filed for divorce in 2020 after years of offering and charging for marriage advice.
“We have worked endlessly over the last three years to make this work and have come to the conclusion that it is healthier and more respectful for us to choose this as the end of our journey as a married couple,” Hollis said in her caption, insinuating that she and her husband had relationship difficulties since 2017.
Meanwhile in 2018, the couple hosted the $1,800 Rise Together couples conference, where the event description states attendees would “learn some tangible advice for improving their relationship.” They dropped a marriage advice YouTube video and began the Rise Together podcast, where they dispensed advice just weeks before the split announcement. (Dave has subsequently hosted alone.)
Neither Rachel nor Dave Hollis are licensed marriage therapists, nor do they have any professional qualifications. In their Facebook video announcing the 2018 Rise Together conference, Rachel Hollis said: “What you’re thinking is, ‘I didn’t know you guys were counselors or therapists, that you had special training in order to guide other couples.”
The camera zoomed in on her face when she admitted: “We don’t.”
As reported in the New York Times, the breakup shocked both Hollis’s employees and her fans; in public, they appeared to be in a happy relationship. But not only was Hollis untruthful about her marriage, she also profited off it. She doled out advice and made people pay for it as if she was qualified.
With her latest video, Hollis once again shines a light on her actual ignorance of the subject. Should someone who doesn’t “know a lot about relationships” charge $1,800 for a couples’ weekend? Should she host a marriage advice podcast?
The answer is obvious: No.
Rachel Hollis has built her career off of being an unattainable type of relatable, of having a marriage that only had small, fixable problems but was outwardly perfect. As time went on, however, the cracks in her perfect life — and therefore the cracks in her trustworthiness — have started to show.
The mask slipped in April, when Hollis admitted she didn’t want to be relatable. Now, months later, it seems the mask slipped once again.