Re-Broadcast- Podcast Episode #2: Rachel Hollis Controversy

EPISODE 02

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:01] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to She’s A Full On Monet, a digital lifestyle magazine for women. Every week, our Editor-In-Chief, Kelly Castillo, along with Megan Black and special guests, participate in a deep-dive discussion about recent articles and topics we have covered. We invite you to become part of our community, where everyone’s welcome.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:25] KC: Welcome to She’s A Full On Monet. This is our second episode, podcast episode two. We want to thank you guys for your patience. We are new to this, and we are learning as we go. Hopefully, you guys understand that and can be a little patient with the process. We promise, we will be fast learners. It will be a more polished product as time goes on. I have no doubt.

[00:00:47] MB: We’ve done it before.

[00:00:49] KC: Yeah. Exactly. Now we have one episode under our belts. We feel like we’re practically pros, right?

[00:00:55] MB: Right. This is how this works now. We get it. We’re professionals.

[00:00:59] KC: We’re throwing ourselves in the deep end of the pool and figuring out how to swim as we go. Thank you for being with us in the journey. I’m Kelly. I have with me, Megan.

[00:01:09] MB: Hi, everybody.

[00:01:11] KC: Hi, guys. Megan, what’s going on with you right now? Your kids just go back to school, but then they didn’t, right?

[00:01:18] MB: Yeah. My kids went back to school, and they didn’t. Yes, one of them, my preschooler went back to school and brought home a cold, which gave it to my third grader, but because of the time we’re in, they either have to get negative COVID tests, or stay home a mandatory 10 days. Emma, my oldest is just not about the COVID test. She has anxiety stuff. Her dad and I –

[00:01:40] KC: Stab your literal brain.

[00:01:42] MB: It’s not like the test is bad, but the idea of – She’s heard enough stories from her friends who’ve had it done, where it’s like, the anticipation of it will break her, that we’re just like, “We’ll just keep you home for 10 days,” which just sounds crazy. She’s going to school for three hours a day anyway, so it’s like, whatever.

Then, I have my youngest home too, just because why not today. Because I was like, the having to get her and pick her up is actually adding more to my day than just keeping her home. Today is a bit of a juggle, but normally they are not here and my Wednesdays are normally just bliss working.

[00:02:15] KC: They’re having a sister day. That’s cute.

[00:02:18] MB: Yes. They’re having a sister day and watching movie and trying to figure life out, which would normally be great if they didn’t do it for 200, 300 straight days this year. They’re like, “Want a sister day out. We’re over each other.” Yeah, I’m good. I’m good. I’m happy to be back and I’m happy to be talking about our subject, because it is one that is something that I feel I have some stuff to say about it. I am a follower of the person we are going to be talking about in the subject. Yeah, take it away, Kelly. What do you –

[00:02:49] KC: Okay, so today, we’re going to talk about an article that we recently published about some of the controversy going on around Rachel Hollis and some controversial TikTok videos that she made, some controversial statements that she made. I’m going to preface this by saying, I have not read her books, or listened to her podcast. I’m familiar with who she is, and what her brand is about, but I’ve never actually picked up one of her books.

For a while, I had meant to, but to be honest, the tone rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t even give her an opportunity to have me become a fan. I think it was the way that books, like Girl Wash Your Face, Girl Stop Apologizing were titled, felt uncomfy. I didn’t like it. I also have a huge – I have a huge problem with authority. I don’t like being talked, patronizing to. I don’t really react well to it.

I felt they were a little bit – the titles were a little bit patronizing. That’s probably why I never got around to reading them. I mean, I know who she is. I know she has been wildly popular. I assume that her message really speaks to a lot of people. I think women and mom life and wife life and just life in general in this day and age, we do look for people who seem to have not so much have the answers, but who have a message that will help us through it and help us navigate it. There’s always a huge market for that. There’s always a place for these influencer type people, authors, motivational people who can speak to that, because there’s a need for it for sure.

Rachel’s TikToks that she has recently posted have been really problematic. There’s been a big backlash. We want to talk about that. We want to talk about as a brand, I had a personal blog for quite a while. I have a lot of friends who do. As a person who makes yourself into a brand, how is that problematic for you? What are the expectations that followers put on you as a person to be an idealized version of yourself and to be at the same time authentic? How do we do that? How much do we show? Are we able to keep some things in our life private when we’re a public figure? Are we entitled to that privacy if we’ve chosen to make ourselves a public figure? Those are things that are interesting to me to talk about with this.

Also, I always tried to at least lead with compassion over judgment. I’m not here to call her out and say, “Oh, she did this. She’s terrible.” Because I do think that everybody makes mistakes and I like to believe that people have good intentions and they’re doing the best that they can. I like to believe that about everybody. I’m sure she did not intend her comments to come away – to come across the way that they did, partly because she’s a businesswoman and I don’t think she would have done that, because it really was negative for her, the consequences.

Also, because I don’t think she realized how people were going to take what she said and whatever her original intent was, I don’t think it was how it came across. Rachel Hollis, she’s a big influencer. She’s a motivational author and speaker. She has a podcast; I think, several maybe podcasts. She’s written a few books, most famously, Girl Wash Your Face. She also wrote Girl Stop Apologizing. She recently posted a couple of TikToks.

The first one, she had referred to her housekeeper as, “The sweet woman who cleans my toilets.” I think those were the words that were taken out of the context of the TikTok, and they did not sit well with a lot of people. Then she apologized for saying that. A fan had called her out for the comment she made about the woman who cleans her toilets and how that made her not relatable.

She responded to that comment very defensively and said, she had no desire to be relatable. She’s never desired to be relatable, and she works way too hard and does way too much for people to be able to relate to her, which she’s entitled to however she sees herself and however she wants to respond to her followers. In that response TikTok, she had captioned it, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Frida Kahlo, Malala and other influential people in history, and said they were all unrelatable.

People took that as her comparing herself to these icons of history and icons of feminism and icons of civil rights. That did not sit well at all with anybody, I think. I don’t know how she meant that to come across. I can only assume she was going along the lines of well-behaved women rarely make history kind of a thread. It’s never a good look to put yourself in the same category as women like that.

I mean, even if you are in that category, it’s not good to self-profess it. It’s okay if other people make comparisons, but not yourself. That didn’t sit well with a lot of people. She’s had a lot of backlash. In the end, she did issue another apology, which she had put everything on to her team, saying that she had not responded earlier, because she expected her team to handle it and they had not handled it properly. I don’t know how you recover from this. I don’t know how much damage it did to her career and her reputation. It was something we definitely should talk about.

[00:08:22] MB: I agree. It’s funny, I came across Rachel Hollis, I bought one of her books, because somebody had recommended it. To be honest, I’ve read four chapters, and I was like, “Okay.” It was more about just who she was and how she became who she was. Then there were some nice messages, but it wasn’t really a favorite read of mine, so I stopped reading it.

Then, I started having this need to find not therapist, but some way to self-cope, especially during this pandemic. Podcasts, self-help podcasts are great, because I wasn’t about to go find a therapist during a pandemic. I ran across Rachel Hollis and her time, her husband, David Hollis, they had a joint podcast.

[00:09:07] KC: The marriage-based podcast, right?

[00:09:09] MB: Yes. Any relationship-based podcasts that that they’re always great additions when you’re trying to work through problems in your own relationships. I started to really follow her and her husband. Then I started to follow her on her own. I loved the fact that she didn’t present herself in a way where it was pre-recorded. She didn’t practice to be perfect. She spoke very freely. It wasn’t too many F-bombs. It wasn’t too off-putting. It was just in a way that I related to and really liked how she spoke. I’ve been a fan of her podcast for a really long time, even after this whole thing happened and her divorce happened and everything. I still followed her, because I felt it made her more relatable, because in a way where it’s like, you had a marriage podcast and everything, then this happens. How are you doing? I’m sure you have a lot of realness to you.

It breaks my heart to hear this, because I do feel an empathy for her, because I do feel like, we all make mistakes. Maybe the way it sounded wasn’t what she intended. I personally run my own social media as a brand within myself. I run it like a business, my own personal Instagram. I have gotten all sorts of comments and DMs of people expecting me to be a certain way, or say a certain thing. Or if I do something that they don’t feel is on brand within who I’m supposed to be, I get attacked for it. I’ve been attacked for it before.

My first thought is like, “I’m not some role model. You chose to idolize me in this way.” That’s my first thought. It doesn’t make it true. When you do sign on to be a certain – people look up to you, you do have an obligation to be very careful about the things you say and what you put out there. As real as you want to be. That’s fine to an extent, but you still have an obligation, because you have a brand to protect.

If you’re going to go out there on TikTok, you better be careful with what you’re saying, because there will be backlash for it. Whether you have a small little Instagram, or you’re an actual brand within yourself, you always have an obligation to be very careful about the things that you’re putting out into social media, because they’re going to be microscopes and looked at very carefully, and you’re going to get backlash for it.

As much as I want to be like, “Oh, I get it. We all make mistakes.” When she says she doesn’t want to be – she never signed up to be a role model, but yeah, you did. I’ve heard other music artists and actresses say that before. It’s like, you don’t mind the privileges that come from it, but you have a problem when people hold you accountable. All of a sudden, you don’t want to be a role model. You are a role model, the minute that you became some public brand figure, etc., etc.

[00:11:57] KC: I think, especially for Rachel, because she can talk about how she really responded negatively to that fan who said that she didn’t come across as relatable, by saying she had never had any intent to be relatable. She’s not relatable, because of her business and how hard she works. The entirety of her message in her books, is that she’s relatable, that she’s just like us and not –

[00:12:19] MB: That’s why it gravitated towards her. She’s relatable to me. I finally found someone who wasn’t perfect. Now all of a sudden, you’re not relatable. Then I have no idea who you are and I have no idea how to feel about you, because I thought you were relatable.

[00:12:34] KC: Right. If we’re not supposed to relate to her, then why are we supposed to listen to her message and her advice? She literally wrote advice books. You have to relate to the people you’re giving advice to, in order to give any helpful advice. I mean, you can’t have it both ways.

I think public figures, whether it’s Rachel Hollis, whether it’s the Kardashians, whether it’s a singer, or an actor, or whoever, if you have chosen to put yourself into the public arena, you have to be so careful about the things that you say. That’s why they have PR teams, where they run everything through them to make sure, because we are all coming from our own perspective and only our own perspective.

Anyone can easily say something that offends someone of a totally different lifestyle, just because they aren’t aware. Not because they have intent to offend, or they have prejudices, or biases, but just simply because they haven’t lived that life and they don’t even know that it’s offensive. It’s good to call people out on those things a little bit, because that is how we learn and that is how we understand other people’s perspectives. We say, “Wow, I never knew that that could be taken that way. I will be more careful in the future.” That’s all that really needs to be said.

[00:13:48] MB: Yeah. Because you wrote a book saying, Girl Stop Apologizing, yet you’ve apologized four times, when you could have just done it right the first time and stop apologizing. Then at the end, to put it off on your team doesn’t even feel you held any bit of accountability.

[00:14:02] KC: This is different than if she had been taped having a private conversation with someone at a social event and that went out, that to me is a very different thing. I mean, you’re still accountable for everything that you say, and no matter what the context is. When you’ve put it on your platform as a TikTok, as a —

[00:14:19] MB: You hit post.

[00:14:21] KC: You make a post and you put it out there for consumption by the world at large, yeah, you’re going to be held accountable. It’s one of those things that you have to understand that everything you say have consequences, and that people are listening to you as a role model, whether you like it or not, people are listening to what you have to say. You can use your platforms to spread kindness and goodness and awareness, or you can use them to perpetuate something negative.

I for one, and I understand her apologies. I do think everyone should have the ability to apologize when they make a mistake, because everybody makes mistakes. It really did not sit well with me, almost more than the comparing herself to Harriet Tubman and Malala. I think that was just ridiculous self-inflation. To talk about the woman who she has in her home helping her as the sweet lady that cleans my toilets, was really for me, the issue. Because the dehumanization of calling someone the woman who cleans my toilets, as if that is her sole-defining characteristic.

I mean, not to mention, I’m sure that’s not the only function that she serves, even in her job role for you. I’m sure she is an all-around amazing help in the house and she does not just scrub toilets. It was just the most low-based way of referring to someone. It goes against my personal principles, that all work is honorable and everyone deserves respect. Looking down on anyone because of what they do for their job, it doesn’t matter where you are in your life, or where they are in their life. If someone is contributing to society at large, is working, that is so honorable in my mind, and it doesn’t matter what role that is.

[00:16:15] MB: Yeah. It was the words, too. It’s just like, I just keep hearing though, “The sweet lady that cleans my toilets.” It’s just like, “My gosh.” She said a lot within a very little amount. It’s like, you don’t realize the impact that you have on your word choice. She chose to post that. I don’t even know who that was for. Sure and not to be relatable.

[00:16:38] KC: It shows such a disconnect from what’s going on in the world right now, from the point of privilege where she comes from, the people who are struggling, it showed such a disconnect to me.

[00:16:49] MB: It would be a hard climb to get out from this. I mean, there are people that she’s helped shift small, or baked their lives, and they are fans of hers. They’re also looking to her to fix this, because they don’t want to be like, “Have I been duped this whole time? Where it was I following some a fraud this whole time?” The people that really do like her. She also, oh, some bigger – I mean, it’s going to take a while. It’s going to take a while. I’ll be interested to see where she goes from here with it, because her podcast, I guess, will try and work on being more relatable to people, because that’s what her brand is. Every episode is how to change some small part of your life, whether it’s a habit. I mean, I learned a lot of my good habits from her.

[00:17:42] KC: That’s part of the reason this is so disappointing, because this was such an opportunity for her to address it in the proper way and to have that moment of, I made a mistake and I learned from it. This is why this was a mistake to refer to someone that way, or to say what I said, and this is what I’m doing to make changes to learn, and to make sure that I don’t do that exact mistake again.

I mean, as a teacher of women on how to live better lives, that was a fantastic opportunity for her to be able to show how to recover from a mistake and how to grow and learn as a person. Because we all have moments, where we say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. In the climate that we’re living in today, we’re all learning so much about each other and culturally and as a society. We are all – Can I talk today? Are all learning new terms. I mean, I’ve had conversations with my husband about pronouns, because he’s a lot older than me, and he doesn’t understand. I have to really hold his hand and walk him through a lot of these new things that are going on in society, which are super positive. People are living authentic lives and it’s amazing, but there are going to be hiccups. There are going to be issues.

This was an opportunity for her to show her followers a way to course correct and walk back a mistake of a slip of the tongue, whether it was that, or whether it was her needing to unlearn some biases that she had of her own, and how to recover from that with grace. That’s the Monet idea, right? It looks perfect from far away, but up close, it’s a mess. My life’s a mess. Your life’s a mess. Everybody’s lives is a mess. Let’s just talk about it. Let’s try not to pretend that isn’t.

[00:19:36] MB: It’s how you handle it, the grace in which you handle it, because if you’re expecting her to be perfect, no. No one’s expecting you to be perfect. Take the opposite of perfect and that’s how you’ve been rolling with it. That would have been the great time for her PR team to step up and be like, “This is how it’s handled now, because you can’t undo it.” How do you come out with it with the most grace?

Because I don’t think she’s a bad person. I don’t think she’s a bad person. It’s just sometimes, we miss say the wrong things and we don’t mean to come across so offensive, like you said. We live in a time where it’s like, everyone’s learning. No one ever means – no one’s ever –

[00:20:12] KC: We’re learning as a society together.

[00:20:13] MB: – people intended. It is easy to offend someone if you’re not careful of which things you’re saying. It’s like, my goodness, even in a crazy world where your message is understood by somebody, your word choices were horrible. Even your message, whatever. You can think whatever about the message. “Oh, you work hard to have that privilege, whatever.” That’s not the problem. It was the thing that you said. “The sweet lady that cleans my toilets.” That was the problem. It’s like, you got to be careful on how – in what you say.

[00:20:42] KC: It was the implied message that that lady does not work as hard as she works. That was really offensive, I think across the board to everyone. Me as not a fan of hers already, if she had handled this situation and come out in the news with her making some statement that was really heartfelt and really a teaching moment for herself and for everyone else, I might have become a fan. Who knows?

[00:21:07] MB: That’s the thing. She could have gained a lot of new fans that way. It would have been good for her business, had she has shown a humanization in a way where it shows a lesson being learned and she’s applying the things that she teaches. It was almost this bratty, really uneducated teenager response of like, no one got to her quick enough to tell her that that was the wrong thing to do.

[00:21:31] KC: It was very Regina George.

[00:21:33] MB: Yes. That’s what it reminded me. I’m like, “Oh.” Then, I was like, “Wait. Is that who you actually are the whole time?” That’s why as a fan, I’m like, “Have I been duped this whole time?” Because if that’s who you truly are and you’re pretending to be someone you’re not, thanks for the fake, but I don’t need that, because it did come across very Regina George, where it was like, “No.”

[00:21:55] KC: No. It’s not a good look. So many celebrities now are being much more authentic with their fans and their followers than ever before in history. If you look at back in the – way back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, celebrities, we never saw them in real life. They were always a curated image and usually had a completely separate secret behind the scenes life that they were living that has actually nothing to do with their public persona. Now, we live in a time where celebrities have direct access to their fans through social media and they’re making the most of it. So many people have built up this huge following, just by being authentic and showing their real life.

[00:22:36] MB: Well, did you see the latest Will Smith thing that came out?

[00:22:38] KC: No, I didn’t see that.

[00:22:41] MB: He posted, it was either on – He posted it everywhere. He literally gained 20 pounds over the – He’s showing it off like, “This is who I am. This is where I’m starting.” He’s being so transparent with his body image at the moment and that he knows he needs to change it, that it’s like, it’s helped his image in a positive way. People are really inspired by it, because –

[00:23:03] KC: That’s what I love. I love when celebrities pull back the curtain a little bit and tell us, we may not be exactly like you. We know we’re privileged, but we have some of the same struggles you do. Things don’t always go exactly perfectly. We don’t live in a movie. Celebrities like Chrissy Teigen, Will Smith, when they show the real life, whether it’s a fail, or win, we feel so much more attached to them.

[00:23:30] MB: Me too.

[00:23:31] KC: Like they are friends. We can relate.

[00:23:32] MB: We do. I mean, when Chrissy Teigen went through what she went through, it’s such a widespread thing, but so many people needed someone to be a voice for that situation. It’s like, she hadn’t shared that, a lot of people wouldn’t have had that opportunity to have that voice and know that somebody else out there was really truly like them and was so transparent about what they went through. We almost need you to make some mistakes every now and then. Just show us that you’re human, and then show us that you’re just like us. When you go when you do it in a way where it’s like you said, Regina George, that’s not what we teach our children. That’s not how we treat each other. You should always just own up to what you do and do it with the most grace that you possibly can.

[00:24:20] KC: Yeah. I think, there’s a huge push right now. Even non-celebrities. If they’re saying things on social media that are offensive, and this happened a lot during the last presidential administration and when we were having so many protests and things that were going on last year, there were a lot of people who went on social media and were saying really offensive things. The public at large went after them. They found out where these people worked, where they lived, and they were calling employers and telling them they’re posting all this racist stuff on social media.

Those are people who are not celebrities. I think if you’re really being offensive, and you have a job, especially in the public sector, you just need to be aware that everything you say is now on the internet forever and ever, if you post it, and you’re going to be held accountable. I have no problem with that.

What I do think is that we should normalize people learning and growing and changing their opinions when they have new information, and we’re being taught so much more. I follow a huge variety of people on social media. My social feed is people who look like me and who live me and people who look nothing like me and live nothing like me. By doing that, I’m exposed to a lot of different types of people that maybe I would never be exposed to otherwise.

That is helping me personally, grow as a person, learn as a person, try to see things from other people’s perspective, and just listen. I think, there’s a huge normalization that needs to happen about doing better as we learn new things, as we have more information. Doing better, learning, growing, making mistakes, and then correcting ourselves. I think, if we jump on someone for a mistake without giving them that opportunity to correct themselves, that is not what I’m about. She did make two apologies. Neither one of which hit the mark for me. She had a great opportunity, and she didn’t use them.

[00:26:24] MB: Yeah. That was my biggest issue is like, okay, well, where was your team there? It just was almost like, it didn’t happen so quickly. You know when something happens, and then the PR team was sleeping, and then too many mistakes had been made before they could catch up. It’s like, what were you thinking? It’s almost like, you just go into that instant defense mode. We all have it. We’re all just grown up children, really. You have to realize, especially someone I have heard her talk about it. She talks about on our podcast, her hours and how hard she works. For someone who’s 90% of the day revolves around her business and her image and life change and stuff like that, that should have been the first thing on her mind when she was responding to the initial videos was like, “I have to keep my image in mind.”

Even if it’s not genuine. You don’t go with the natural attack mode that you would if you were say, like my nine-year-old. Where it’s like, “What’s the first thing that came to my mind? Blah.” That’s what it felt like. Then you’re just like, “I don’t even want to throw my kid under the bus like that,” but it did feel like that. You know what I mean? Where it’s like, you just say the first thing that comes to your mind, because you’re just whatever.

Yeah, we get it. We’re all human. Then even when we make mistakes, I’ve made mistakes on mistakes on mistakes before. I’m not perfect. It’s like, that’s why time will tell to see how she handles it. Because if she just goes about business as usual and expects those very wishy-washy apologies that she did to hold the test of time and pulled out her brand on long enough to keep people on and build, that’s crazy.

You do have to revisit in a way somehow, whether it’s literally a whole podcast on the subject, where you’re just speaking to people and you’re being yourself and you’re being open and you’re being ready to be completely transparent about that, you can’t hold on to whatever it is she’s holding on. I feel she’s holding on to something.

[00:28:25] KC: At the same time, though, if she goes on as business as usual, and doesn’t really address it again, all we can do is come to the conclusion that she really did feel the way that she expressed. That’s why she wasn’t truly apologetic about it, or had a clear message of regret. Okay, this person who this person is.

[00:28:42] MB: She has to do something.

[00:28:44] KC: So that she’s going to refine her follower group to people who think like her. There’ll probably still be a market for it, but it won’t be as broad-reaching.

[00:28:52] MB: I mean, when your whole thing is helping people with their life and you’re living your life in a way that that no one approves of, it’s like, who’s going to buy into it at that point?

[00:29:02] KC: Yeah.

[00:29:03] MB: I don’t know. Unless, you happen to stumble across her and have never heard about the controversy before, or you truly don’t see anything wrong in her actions and the things she said. I mean, I’m sure there’s people out there that are like, “I just don’t see the problem.”

[00:29:16] KC: I read to people, a lot of people the wrong way too, how she was promoting relationship-based books and a marriage podcast. Well, behind the scenes, her marriage was falling apart. That seemed to a lot of people, I think, a money grab, because she –

[00:29:33] MB: I reached out to find her because of relationship advice. I found her and her then husband, because of that. Because I was looking for ways to just help with my own personal issues. When she went from what seemingly was a happy, healthy – I mean, no one’s perfect, but they were open about what they would do when things were problematic and then arrived. They felt like, if there was a problem, they would be – not we’ll have to be an open book about it, but it felt so out of nowhere, that it almost did feel like, how long were you going to pretend like this is –

[00:30:07] KC: How am I going to go on with this? Right. Yeah, I’ve been through a divorce and it doesn’t happen overnight. Very rarely. Unless, there’s some cataclysmic event.

[00:30:14] MB: I mean, you don’t want to totally go and talk about it. You got to cop up to it at some point. If you wait too long, it just feels like, “Okay, are you just trying to sell more books?”

[00:30:24] KC: That’s what it feels like. Yeah. That’s unfortunate, because everyone’s relationship has issues. Nobody has a perfect relationship. If she had been more authentic, or open about it, and the issues they were going through with, I mean, they were already choosing to put it out in the public, their relationship as a model of relationships. If you’re really honest and you go through, okay, we’re struggling with this at this moment. Then it’s a natural progression, so this is the decision that we’ve made, then you can segue that into how to transition, how to recover from that. There’s a big audience for that, too. There’s a way to do it authentically, and still be on brand.

[00:31:05] MB: You feel like, because you have been through it, do you feel you could have been able to talk about that transition during the time of your transition? Because I know for her, I don’t even think she’s actually full-blown had a podcast and addressed it, because they were together for so long and it was her first real relationship. It was such a raw wound that it was like, if I was in her shoes, would I be able to talk about that while I was in the process of talking about it? Or would I just go straight silent about it, until I could actually say the words out loud?

[00:31:41] KC: I would have needed time to process what was even going on in my head before I could talk about it. When I went through my divorce, one of my biggest – the reason it took me so long to get divorced, I knew it wasn’t working. I knew I needed to end it and get divorced. What took me the longest was my fear of how everyone around me was going to react. My dad has been married a lot of times, and I wanted to be the exception. I didn’t want to do the same mistakes. I thought it was going to be – I’m super committed.

That only goes as far as it goes. At some point, you have to make the decision that’s healthiest for yourself and your kids. I did that. It was really scary. I felt like, I was going to be judged from everyone. I felt like everyone had thought my marriage was going to fail from the start. I was very young when I got married and my ex was very much older than me. I thought, “Okay, I’m going to prove everybody right. I’m just going to say, I told you so.” I just didn’t want to hear it. It went on a lot longer than it should have.

I’m sure, a lot of people feel that way. A lot of people would have the same situation. Then it’s like, how do you tell everybody to how do you make up a bit? If you’re not a celebrity couple, you’re not going to make a big PR announcement. You have to tell your families. You have to tell all your mutual friends.

[00:32:59] MB: Then you have your kids – the kids’ images to protect, tou, because she has kids and it’s like, that’s a big thing to have to do. It’s like, I don’t want to sit here and judge that part. It is. It does raise. That’s the problem is that when you make a mistake like she made, then everything else in your life is –

[00:33:17] KC: Is under a microscope.

[00:33:17] MB: – looked at like under a microscope. Then people take something like that and they go, “Were you just trying to make money?” They look at everything. They were also looking at how she grew up and then did she come from privilege? Has this always been something she’s always thought about? It’s like, nobody would have ever probably opened those doors had she had not said that one comment.

When you’re brand, when you’re a person that has any public eye being looked at in front of you, then all of a sudden, all these detectives go into work and they really dive into it. Then all of a sudden, now you’re having multiple accusations coming up about you that you were not expecting, because you made one bad TikTok video.

I don’t know. I don’t know if maybe she should have talked about the transition period, because that’s probably hard for her. Now, it makes it look like, she was just trying to make money off of people.

[00:34:13] KC: I think a good comparison is at the same time that this was happening, that picture of Chloe Kardashian got posted, and then immediately taken down. Unfortunately, once it’s out there, it’s out there. She had gone public asking people not to repost it, asking people to delete it if they had a copy. It was not a bad photo for I think, actually, it’s gorgeous. It was just an unedited photo of her in a bikini. Her body is amazing. She’s done so much work. Worked hard on her fitness and body shot a whole show about it. She looked amazing.

[00:34:47] MB: The people that are going to rip it apart.

[00:34:50] KC: Yeah. I thought she looked amazing. There was a huge backlash against her, asking people to take the photo down saying, “You and your sisters perpetuate body image issues in young women. You’ve made yourself a public brand and your body a public brand by having shows like Revenge Body.”

While I see their point, she handled it properly, which was the only major difference between these two scenarios, first, she wasn’t offending anybody, or any specific group of people. She was only talking about herself. She made a very public post where she talked about her own body image issues and said, since she started being in the public way, people have torn apart her body, nitpicked the way she looks, have been very cruel mean, given her self-esteem issues that she still struggles with to this day.

Well, the she does think that photo is a beautiful photo, she takes the time to edit and curate all her photos. She just wanted to take it down. I think, even though she’s a celebrity, she does have that right of privacy. When she’s that honest about the fact that she does have these competence issues and body image issues, that makes people much more sympathetic to what she’s saying and feel much more connected to her. I think she probably even gained fans in how she handled that. That’s another example of a celebrity –

[00:36:08] MB: That just comes from a seasoned professional. I mean, the Kardashians have had every 90 seconds, there’s something they have to a fairly theme to work on. Rachel Hollis is working with whoever’s like – it was my first real issue. This is not how I handle it, I guess. I feel like, next time if there’s an issue, there will certainly be, hopefully, more of an in depth, more human attempt to have an apology. Because yeah, I mean, try and be Chloe Kardashian for one day and handle 15 of the comments. They’re vicious.

[00:36:42] KC: Vicious. Vicious.
[00:36:44] MB: Then she has to go home and look in the – At the end of the day when everyone’s gone home and the phone’s not even down, she has to look in the mirror and then sit with those comments. If you can just avoid something that could – I’m sorry. I know it’s totally off topic, but it’s also not – I remember my mom told me. Remember Karen Carpenter?

[00:37:03] KC: Yeah.

[00:37:04] MB: Remember, my mom would tell me how to like – she always taught me to be very careful with how you spoke about people, because Karen Carpenter started an eating disorder because she overheard someone at a restaurant talking about how she looks. It’s just that always stuck with me that anything you say can just be taken in such a way and can cause such a negative reaction.

I’ve had people when I was pregnant, asked me if I was trying to lose weight, or stay a certain weight. Nitpicking people’s image, whether it’s like, you’re overweight or underweight, it really can mess with the psyche.

[00:37:37] KC: It totally does.

[00:37:37] MB: Simply just being on a photo, just so she avoids that bad experience, I get that a 100%. She did it really well, because she explained exactly that. She did it in a way where it’s like, “I’m not trying to appear perfect. I’m just trying to protect my soul, which is, at the end of the day, what I need to protect the most above anything else.”

[00:37:56] KC: For her younger fans, and people who do – and girls in their preteens and teens that are in the middle of that, the body image stuff that goes on in that age frame, would read that and feel like, “Okay, I’m not alone, in the fact that I look in the mirror and I nitpick my body.” She looks amazing and she’s no feeling that.

[00:38:19] MB: We all edit our photos before we post them. Don’t come at her for editing her photos. We all do it. It’s just easy to pick on someone like that. It just shows you that you can do something that people don’t necessarily think is a good thing and this is how you handle it, versus how you do not handle it.

[00:38:37] KC: Right. We looked at celebrities for how to do anything from fitness, to how to live, to relationship advice, to all of that. We also need to be looking to them for how to recover from missteps and how to course-correct when we’re on the wrong course, and how to apologize sincerely when you’ve offended someone, or hurt someone. We get some celebrities who obviously are totally delivering on that and we get some celebrities who, like Rachel Hollis, were just falling short.

[00:39:05] MB: Yeah. It’s a good reminder, even if you’re not even on a public platform. This is how to apologize. This is how not to apologize. This is how to do it in a way where it comes across sincere. Because that’s the other thing is if she does a full-blown apology, will the sincerity be there? I don’t know. How many times has it come across so insincere that it almost feels like –

[00:39:24] KC: Too little, too late.

[00:39:25] MB: Too late. Also, still obligatory and necessary. You still have to do it. I don’t know if I’ll believe you, but if you don’t do it, it’s worse.

[00:39:33] KC: It’s worse. Yeah. For sure.

[00:39:34] MB: It’s way worse.

[00:39:35] KC: I know. I’ve made a million mistakes in my life, and I’ve hurt people deeply unintentionally, mostly. I mean, I’m not a malicious person.

[00:39:43] MB: For the most part, it was not with good intention.

[00:39:46] KC: It’s not intentional. I mean, I’ve done things where people had to come to tell me, “Hey, what you just did really hurt me.” I try when I apologize. I do this even with my children, because I’ve made parenting mistakes. I’ve reacted bad to situations that happened, where I had to come, and I think it’s important also to apologize to kids when you mess up. When I apologize to anyone, I try to say, “Look, my intentions were not to hurt you. Now that I know that I have, these are the steps that I’m going to take to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”

That to me is a sincere apology, where you actually show action points of how you’re not going to repeat that. That makes the other person feel heard and feel secure when they walk away from that situation, that they don’t need to have their guard up, that you’re not going to do that thing again.

[00:40:34] MB: I think, if anything, she needs to invest in someone who does this for a living, to tell her like, “This is how we’re handling it from this point forward, if you want to recover.” Hopefully, she has, because I don’t even know how if I was in her shoes, how I would handle it. I just know that no more than little apologies. Just show us. Show us with your actions and the content that you put forth and the way you utilize your social media. That should be monitored through some PR team. I’m sorry. TikTok, I get it. We’re all supposed to be our authentic selves, but that was just way too authentic.

[00:41:08] KC: Try not to be your authentic self, if your authentic self is being a Karen. Try not to do that. Be a different person.

[00:41:16] MB: She likes using those platforms to really just be herself. She’s utilized them when she’s having a hard day and just reminded people that you cannot – She had a really good TikTok ones that I reposted, that was just talking about when you’ve had a really hard day, how to not kick yourself too hard about it. It was a really good message. She knows how to use that platform for good. It’s not just this dump of thoughts placed, that you’re just supposed to just be like, “This is on my mind right now. I’m going to rant, here because I have –”

[00:41:47] KC: I’ve seen plenty of those. Yeah.

[00:41:48] MB: I know. I feel like, if anything, everyone’s going to be watching her a little bit more than they were, just to see where she goes from here and we’ll see what she does next —

[00:41:58] KC: If she her second apology really put this on her team, then she needs to maybe have more diversity in her team. Maybe that’s how she addresses this by saying, “I have more diverse perspectives to bounce things off of now. I’m getting more information, so that I don’t do this again,” because maybe she’s just surrounding yourself with people exactly like herself.

[00:42:19] MB: Yup, that could be true. Though, she might have to do some looking at her team. Because, I mean, we all make mistakes, but it’s like, it’s how you recover from those mistakes that are big and how you move forward from them are even bigger. Because like you can say, I’m sorry. You can say I’m sorry, but it’s like, if your actions don’t meet your words, then no one’s going to believe your apologies.

[00:42:40] KC: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a tough situation. Hopefully, I just hope because she does have such a big following, that she’s able to address this in a little bit clear and more effective way, because it would be a good example for other people who do follow her. We all need that example.

[00:42:58] MB: We do. We do. I hope for the best for her too, because I mean, with this new shift, when your whole business is based on being around people, and that’s been shut down for a year, and then a lot of your business is based on your marriage, and then that is shifted too, this is a completely new time for her to completely rebrand and re-shift. It’s like, this has to go with it. In order for people to embrace the new Rachel Hollis that she’s trying to put out there and rebrand herself. You have to make sure you’re surrounding yourself with a good team that has your best intentions in mind. It might be just slightly better than you, so that when you make these mistakes, they know how to handle it in the most professional way. Because you may not know what to do. You shouldn’t have to figure it out yourself all the time.

[00:43:41] KC: Yeah. Maybe just don’t respond to the negative comments, if you’re not in the headspace to make a productive response. She didn’t need to respond to the girl who told her she wasn’t relatable. She could have left it at that.

[00:43:55] MB: Yeah. You can go silent. I know a lot of celebrities, when they post something that they think might be controversial, whether it’s a photo or something, they just turn the comments off. I don’t know if you can do that for TikTok, but I know Instagram, you can, where it’s like, you don’t even give them the choice to be mean, or bait you into trying to some – because sometimes you just can’t help it and you just want to just – but you can’t. You would have to go silent.

[00:44:20] KC: I mean, if you look at whatever the person is saying to you, and sometimes people just are mean. There’s no productivity behind what they’re saying. They’re just stabbing. They’re just poking. Sometimes people are saying things that maybe you should take it a little bit to heart and say, “Hey, this person is feeling this way about what I said. What’s my percentage of responsibility there? Is there a learning opportunity here? Or is that person just being spiteful?” I mean, and really sit with that for a minute before you react. Because defensie is natural.

[00:44:49] MB: It’s natural. The more followers you have, the more people out there that are going to attack you like that.

[00:44:54] KC: Yeah. It’s natural to be defensive. If you can actually think about it for a minute, and maybe there is something for you to learn. I try to learn from every experience I have, and I’ve failed at it a million times. I like to think that’s how I am where I am, is by actually asking myself when things happen to me, what’s my percentage of responsibility here? Sometimes the answer is, you know what, it’s really low. It’s 5%. This was mostly the other person. Sometimes, I have to have that hard conversation with myself where I say, “Okay, you have some responsibility here.”

[00:45:27] MB: That’s incredibly mature. It’s hard to do. It really is hard to do, because you instantly want to just go into what the other person is doing to make you this way.

[00:45:36] KC: Sometimes, though in my own life, I’ve had people do really bad things to me. When I asked myself, what’s my percentage? I’ve taught my kids to ask themselves that too, when something happens to them, what’s my percentage of responsibility? Sometimes, my percentage of responsibility is, I knew that I had a bad friend and I didn’t cut that off. I let them continue to be around me, until they hurt me. Or, I was in the wrong place doing the wrong thing. Or I didn’t listen to the voice inside my head, that told me this situation is sketchy. Or it could be anything. It could be, I wasn’t prepared for this. Next time, I’m going to be prepared for that. Or you have bad people, and you need to weed out your garden a little bit. There’s always something I can take from every situation and try to improve.

[00:46:21] MB: It’s just like, when in life do you pick up on that message? It’s like, I didn’t pick up on that message until I was in my 30s. Even then, it’s still a daily reminder of – it’s a daily reminder. Sometimes, you don’t pick up at it until much, much later. Then you’re still living your life like a Regina George for a while. Then you don’t hold –

[00:46:43] KC: Sometimes when our kids are small, that’s that. That’s where you plant those seeds. You start when they’re little. If they forgot their jacket and they’re cold all day at school, then the question is, that must have been really hard. What can we do next time to make sure we remember our jacket? Have them problem solve for themselves. Because those little conversations will help you be able to handle big mess ups like this, what we’re talking about today.

Being able to take responsibility for your actions, whether it’s for getting your lunch when you’re seven, or not turning in that permission slip for something you really wanted to do when you’re a kid, or whatever, or having bad friends. Taking responsibility for your actions like that and learning how to self-correct is a huge tool. I can see a lot of adults that I interact with, where I’m like, “Wow. Okay, you didn’t learn that lesson.” Okay. It’s not an easy thing to learn as an adult, especially if you are a successful adult and you’re surrounded with people who are yes people and tell you how great and wonderful you are.

[00:47:52] MB: Yeah. It’s hard to admit you’re wrong.

[00:47:53] KC: It’s hard. Yeah.

[00:47:54] MB: It is.

[00:47:55] KC: It’s hard to hold yourself accountable when people around you don’t hold you accountable, which I think is true for a lot of celebrities, and super successful people. They get away with a lot of bad behavior.

[00:48:04] MB: Yeah. They hire their friends, or people that just want to people please, or tell them they’re great. Then, they never really have that mirror that they can’t avoid reflecting back inward.

[00:48:13] KC: They don’t have the same natural consequences that normal people have, where if you treat someone unkindly, they’re going to say, “Screw you. Goodbye.” Maybe celebrities, it doesn’t work that way.

[00:48:26] MB: No, that’s true. That’s a very good point, because their jobs depend on it. Who’s going to come and be like – You do need to have someone in there that will sit you down. Handle it for you in a way where they’re helping you coach through what you should do next, but also making sure that you’re learning what you’re doing was wrong and you’re also taking that lesson yourself. You shouldn’t let all of your PR team handle it, because then you’re just out there making the same mistakes and having someone else clean up your mess.

Hopefully, she really truly understands what the problem was. Someone of some profession can help her handle it from this point forward, but she also learned something from it. You know what I mean?

[00:49:05] KC: Yeah. To have a little bit more respect for the people who follow you, and who spend their money, whether they earn that money scrubbing toilets, or whether they earn that money being CEO, it doesn’t matter. We all work for money. Spending that money on your books, on your coaching things, whatever it is that you do, you have to have the utmost respect for the people that put you in the situation you’re in. The people that are choosing to spend their dollars on you as a brand.

[00:49:34] MB: Because you’re not the only one out there that does what it is that you do. There are other people that they can go follow, that might have a little bit of more of a sensitivity chip inside, that aren’t going to just openly speak. Again, we’re all allowed to make mistakes. I don’t know her personally. She could be a really fantastic person, who just happened to make some really bad mistakes and that’s all fine and good. It’s like, how are you going to fix it from this point forward? Because what you do, even though it’s great, there’s more people out there that do that as well. You got to not only retain your followers that liked you before all this happened, but you want to also build a new following at some point that aren’t going to just associate your name with this thing that happened.

Because there’s a lot of people that had never heard about her, or don’t follow her like I do. Now, that’s all they associate it with, because TikTok’s a big machine. If you’re viral enough, or if you’re talked about enough, then then that’s just all your name can be associated with, especially if you’ve never had any other interaction with her before.

[00:50:35] KC: Yeah. I agree.
[00:50:35] MB: You got to undig that hole now, of people that only know you by this. That’s not good.

[00:50:42] KC: Well now, I mean, you’re in all called publicity is good publicity, they used to say.

[00:50:46] MB: Not now.

[00:50:47] KC: Now now. She’s in the news. She has that opportunity to hopefully, say something meaningful. I’m listening now. I wasn’t listening to her before. Now I’m listening, because I want to see –

[00:50:58] MB: Where she goes from here.

[00:50:59] KC: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:51:01] MB: We all are. Because we’re like, “Girl, stop apologizing. Just do something else.” Make a move on this chess game. Stop waiting around. I mean, from like I said, from a fan’s perspective, I was disappointed. Because I felt I was watching a magic show. Then all of a sudden, all of the tricks of the magician had been revealed. I’m like, “This wasn’t as cool as I thought it was.”

[00:51:29] KC: Yeah. When you’re at the puppet show and you finally see the strings, you have to just –

[00:51:34] MB: It makes me not want eager to turn and tune into her next episode, because I’m like, even if it finds me well, there’s this sense of BS behind it that I’m always on the radar for. That it’s like, even as a fan, I’m just like, “Where do I go from here?” I’m staying tuned, for sure, but I’m like, I’ll go one way or the other, this way. When before I was a very big fan of hers. I used to repost her stuff a lot. I used to reference her a lot. Now, I feel foolish, because it makes me feel almost associated with what she felt.

[00:52:07] KC: I’m not big cancel culture person. I do think everybody gets benefit of the doubt and everybody gets to correct their mistakes. That’s why I’m not into canceling Rachel Hollis, but I definitely want to see where she goes from here. I think it can go either way.

[00:52:23] MB: I’m certainly not either. If you were a fan of hers, and you were listening to her for life advice, and then this happened and then you continued, there’d be a certain sense of unsureness of whether what she was saying was legit or not.

[00:52:38] KC: I don’t know, because it’s like, if you’re going to therapy and you find out your therapist is going to therapy.

[00:52:42] MB: You find out your therapist is terrible.

[00:52:44] KC: Or her life is a mess, or she is in therapy herself, or whatever, does that make the advice she gave you null and void? Not necessarily. No.

[00:52:53] MB: That’s true. I mean, if her first episode is how to be relatable, I’m going to laugh. You know what I mean? Yeah. That’s true. We all observe –

[00:53:02] KC: It’s like Alice in Wonderland, who said I give very good advice, but I very seldom listen to it.

[00:53:07] MB: Somebody call and follow it. Yeah. I’m totally about – the canceled culture thing, I am not about either. I’ll be interested to see how you fix this. Because it’s so –

[00:53:18] KC: We’re all staying tuned to see what she does next.

[00:53:22] MB: Awesome.

[00:53:23] KC: All right. Next episode, we’ll be back to discuss more.

[00:53:27] MB: Yup.

[OUTRO]

[00:53:28] ANNOUNCER: Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode. Don’t forget to bookmark our site, shesafullonmonet.com. Subscribe to our newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. If you’re enjoying this podcast, it helps us a lot if you can follow, rate and review. See you all next week.

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