For the past few years, almost every time I have scrolled through TikTok — which is multiple times per day, I must admit — I have come across a video by Eli Rallo, perhaps better known by her username @thejarr. During COVID-19, when she found internet fame, I found her videos amusing. Her page was filled with restaurant reviews and her signature “jar” videos, where she would fill a giant mason jar with candy, cookies and anything else she saw fit. I liked her content for the most part, although eventually I started watching fewer and fewer of her videos, scrolling more quickly each time her face flashed across my screen.
After reading her book, “I Didn’t Know I Needed This: The New Rules for Flirting, Feeling and Finding Yourself,” I realized why.
When I heard Rallo wrote a book, I was excited. I thought I enjoyed her content and I couldn’t wait to hear the take of a 20-something-year-old sharing her life and dating experiences with the world. Instead, what I found was so entirely unrelatable I was almost offended and – disclaimer – I couldn’t even finish the book. That being said, take my opinion with a grain of salt; it’s possible that the second half of the book was a complete shift from the first half, though I doubt it.
“I Didn’t Know I Needed This” is described as a guide for flirting and dating, but I was more drawn to it as a guide for self-betterment. Upon reflection, maybe I should have realized that the title did give away the topic of the book. It was all about men. Every chapter discussed Rallo’s experiences with dating and hookups which, while valuable and necessary to a woman’s development, all centered around the men. Rallo claimed that at certain times in her life she was a serial dater, going on dates up to four times a week. She reflected on teary phone calls with her mom, devastated over how terrible she felt about herself because a man didn’t seem to like her.
This isn’t a bad thing, of course. Unfortunately, most people can relate to this experience. But in a book devoted to loving and finding yourself, claiming that basing your worth on a man is a universal experience doesn’t make the point Rallo intends.
While some people may be able to relate to Rallo’s experience in the dating world, she told each story as if it was something that every person had experienced at some point in their lives and was likely experiencing at that very moment. She shared that after each date she went on she would come home and aggressively swipe through every dating app, eagerly setting up her next date. As someone who has never loved dating apps and doesn’t lie awake until the early hours of the morning searching for a man to take me out that weekend, this was wildly unapplicable to my own life, especially since I chose this book to feel empowered and amused. This sentiment is shared by other readers I’ve spoken to which showed me I was not alone. In the way Rallo told her story, every moment of her day was consumed by the pursuit of love; she never focused on herself and how she could grow as an individual, instead focusing on how much better she thought she could be after she found a man.
I was disappointed in the way that Rallo made it seem like the aim of every 20-something woman is to find love, ignoring every other aspect of their life in that pursuit. The book claims to act as a guide for self-love and appreciation but instead assumes that everyone is so focused on finding a relationship that the only way to grow is to stop focusing on serial dating. This assumes that every other 20-something must also be a serial dater.
Is there no growth beyond dating? Can you not grow if this knowledge is something you have already realized? Can you not grow if you have already found a happy relationship? Are the only options for what is considered good versus bad searching for love or not searching for love? Where is the happy medium?
Rallo has recently announced that she is in the process of writing her second book, to be titled “Does Anyone Else Feel This Way?” that will be released in Fall 2025. Hopefully, this next book will be a little less focused on how men make women feel like they are worthy and a little more focused on how to feel worthy and amazing without a man’s involvement. I personally may never know because I do not plan on reading it.
After reading “I Didn’t Know I Needed This,” I felt let down by Rallo who I had previously respected as a relatable and empowering woman. I was hurt, as a woman, to see how she based her worth on the men that had treated her badly in the past and by her assumption that many other women probably thought the same. I do not want women to read this book and think that this is the norm. I want women to know that how they feel about themselves has nothing to do with how a man feels about them, whether it be romantic or otherwise.
In the end, my opinion on “I Didn’t Know I Needed This” is that I really didn’t need this.
Rating: 1/5
