The Girlboss Is Dead

Whose side are you on? You have to choose—Alex or Alix—even though you don’t know what the fight is about. Even if you don’t even know who these women are.

If the words “What is up, daddy gang?” mean nothing to you, a brief primer: Alex Cooper is the host of the podcast Call Her Daddy; Alix Earle is a TikToker and the founder of a skin-care line. They may be the two most talked-about women on the internet right now, and they’re in an argument, and no one knows why. That has offered people the fun opportunity to compare two women and pick a favorite without having to consider any relevant facts. But watching this admittedly absurd conflict play out provides something even more interesting than that: a view into exactly how people react to female ambition. Only a few years ago, in the girlboss era, women were encouraged to openly seek power. Now a major segment of the internet seems to think that female hustle is embarrassing, if not offensive.

Cooper is six years older than Earle, but the two women with long, blond hair look so similar that many people get them confused. In 2023, Cooper started a podcast network, Unwell, and one of her first talent grabs was Earle, her then-friend and protégé, who was going to start her own podcast, called Hot Mess. Eighteen months later, Earle was out, and people started speculating about what had gone wrong. In April, Cooper posted a video to her TikTok: “Alix Earle, hey girl, the passive aggressive reposts and the likes and the commenting on things—I gotta call you out here. You’re gonna need to get specific and just say what you’ve got to say about me. There’s no NDA. No one is stopping you. Stop hiding behind other people and just say it yourself. What’s the beef?”

Earle promptly commented, “Okay on it!!”

Months later, we still have no clue what happened—Saturday Night Live even spoofed the exchange in a “Weekend Update” sketch in which the women talk utter nonsense at each other. But one thing is clear: The internet is Team Earle, and it’s all because of the women’s differing approaches to fame and success.

Cooper has been an unapologetic girlboss from the beginning. She got her start at Barstool Sports in 2018 and climbed the podcast ranks to sign a $60 million deal with Spotify and then a $125 million deal with SiriusXM, making her the highest-earning female podcaster by far. She has been described as “this generation’s Oprah Winfrey,” in part because she is blunt and open about her drive: “I can walk into any single room in business, and I can get the deal done,” she told Forbes. Cooper also speaks regularly about reproductive rights and abortion access, and in 2024, she had Kamala Harris on her podcast.

Earle, meanwhile, treats her success as a happy accident. She describes herself as a “hot mess” and acts like the girl’s girl next door. “I don’t get very political online and that’s my choice,” she told Time for its recent issue devoted to the world’s top-100 “creators”; Earle was on the cover. “A lot of my reasoning for that is when I’ve been younger I think I’ve gone online and spoken before I actually knew what I was speaking about, and I think it’s really important for me to be educated on what I’m speaking on.” She makes $450,000 for each sponsored Instagram story she posts, and her skin-care company sold $1 million worth of products within its first five minutes.

“All the girlies love Alix Earle,” Dave Portnoy, Cooper’s old boss and the founder of Barstool Sports, said in a TikTok video summarizing the dispute. “She’s a girly girl. They love her. Alex Cooper’s this ruthless businesswoman.”

That does seem to be an accurate synopsis of how many people see Cooper. “I think she is a mean girl and she embraces being a mean girl,” the internet personality Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia said on her podcast.

by Annie Joy Williams, The Atlantic |  Read more:

Image: The Atlantic. Source: Kevin Mazur/Getty; Stephanie Augello/Variety/Getty.
[ed. No comment (though... Chickenfry is an awesome nickname).]