Girl, Wash Your Timeline

Rachel Hollis, the best-selling author and motivational speaker, built a blockbuster business sharing her “authentic” self. Then things got a little too real.

May 14 was supposed to mark Rachel Hollis’s return to her happy place: a stage in front of an adoring audience. That was the day that Rise, her self-improvement company’s conference for women, was scheduled to begin in Austin, Texas. At least 100 people would attend in person, and more than 2,000 had registered by mid-April to join online. It would be a fraction of her usual crowd — nearly 50,000 people logged on for a virtual event in May 2020 — but would put her on track to business as usual. But in early April, Ms. Hollis, the 38-year-old author of the New York Times best-selling books “Girl, Wash Your Face” and “Girl, Stop Apologizing,” posted a video to TikTok that jarred many of her devoted fans.