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Girl, Wash Your Face’s Back-of-Book Description
Do you ever suspect that everyone else has life figured out and you don’t have a clue? If so, Rachel Hollis has something to tell you: that’s a lie.
As the founder of the lifestyle website TheChicSite.com and CEO of her own media company, Rachel Hollis developed an immense online community by sharing tips for better living while fearlessly revealing the messiness of her own life. Now, in this challenging and inspiring new book, Rachel exposes the twenty lies and misconceptions that too often hold us back from living joyfully and productively, lies we’ve told ourselves so often we don’t even hear them anymore.
With painful honesty and fearless humor, Rachel unpacks and examines the falsehoods that once left her feeling overwhelmed and unworthy, and reveals the specific practical strategies that helped her move past them. In the process, she encourages, entertains, and even kicks a little butt, all to convince you to do whatever it takes to get real and become the joyous, confident woman you were meant to be.
With unflinching faith and rock-hard tenacity, Girl, Wash Your Face shows you how to live with passion and hustle–and how to give yourself grace without giving up.
My Thoughts
Every now and then, I hop on a bandwagon. And even though I put this one off for about a year, I finally read Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be.
I actually received this book as a gift a while back and was genuinely excited about it. But then I heard that it was heavily saturated with anecdotes and advice for mothers which, as a woman with no kids, threw me off it a bit. Flash forward to a year later and I thought – other reviews be damned! Let’s read it!
You guys… this book is heavily saturated with anecdotes and advice for mothers. And while we’re talking about things that make this book hard to relate to, I’ll say this: Girl, Wash Your Face is written by and for a straight, white, Christian woman who is either now or desires to be a mother. Oh, and it helps if you’re upper middle class, in terms of income level, too.
In my opinion, I really doubt this book would resonate with a woman of color, a lesbian, or a person who had to wonder where their next meal would come from. It barely resonated with me and I have had a pretty easy life, compared to some people.
I think what she’s doing is great – inspiring women to embrace themselves and their power and go after their dreams! But… a large majority of it just comes off as kind of shallow to me. Maybe because I’ve read other, deeper books? Maybe because there was something about her writing that felt a little superficial and surface level?
Could it be because before I even picked it up someone told me I might not like it? Hard to say.
In any case, Girl, Wash Your Face is great.. if this is one of the first inspiring, self-improvement type books you’ve ever picked up. If it’s not, it’s still enjoyable. It’s a nice, quick read about getting out of your head and tips that might help you improve your life and outlook.
And I don’t mean to imply that the whole thing is shallow – it’s not. There are moments when she divulges some really difficult struggles that I couldn’t even imagine. But that’s all it is – moments. She doesn’t spend a lot of time and pages there. Which almost feels like she’s downplaying it, and I would bet that’s the opposite of what she’s going for.
But even though I didn’t think it was the best non-fiction/self-improvement book I’ve ever read, I still found a TON of quotes that I liked.
By it Now!
Favorite Quotes From Girl, Wash Your Face
“When you really want something, you will find a way. When you don’t really want something, you will find an excuse.”
“The only thing standing between me and achieving my goals is the ability to build on my past success.”
“Nobody’s psychosis is one layer deep.”
“Your tribe is out there, and if you haven’t found it yet, I’d challenge you to consider that maybe your people come in a different package that you thought they might.”
“I cannot continue to live as half of myself simply because it’s hard for others to handle all of me. “
“…her brothers will be told by society that their options are endless, and she will be shown by media that her world is limited.”
“I don’t believe everything happens for a specific reason but I do believe it’s possible to find purpose – even in the absence of explanation.”
“I know they say nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, but I assume that’s because they’ve never had Nachos BellGrande.”
“It’s an offense to your soul to continue to treat yourself so badly.”
“At some point, you grow up enough to understand that many people here on earth are different from you; and what you do with that knowledge defines much of your story.”
In Conclusion
Girl, Wash Your Face had a lot of great qualities as a thing that exists out there in the world. But as a book, for me – it gets only 3 stars. I just think she had the opportunity to go deeper, to challenge readers more… and she didn’t.
But of course, not everyone is at the same place I’m at in life. Like I said above, maybe this is the first non-fiction/self-improvement type book you’ve ever considered. If so – I genuinely encourage you to pick it up. It’s not a cure-all, it’s not a life changer – but it is a fantastic first step. And we all gotta start somewhere.
Thank you for checking out this review! Be sure to read my other reviews here and my short stories here.
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