← The Brett Cooper Show
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- [00:00]
A
Well, everyone, Alex Cooper, host of the Call Her Daddy podcast, the founder of Unwell, just announced that she is expecting her first baby with her husband, Matt Kaplan. And it set the Internet ablaze for a myriad of reasons. Now, you can see her announcement photos here. She looks very happy. She looks lovely. But this really got people talking for two main reasons. Number one, because this kind of is a trump card in the whole drama between her and Alix Earle, the speculations about how Unwell is doing in terms of business. So suddenly, thanks to this well timed announcement, people are thinking about she and her husband and her husband allegedly yelling at their employees and more about the baby. And number two, conservatives and right wingers online are very angry. They're calling her a hypocrite. They are saying that she intentionally led all of these women astray, led them down the path of hookup culture while she was secretly getting married and having babies. And while obviously they have a point there, I don't really know if it's that simple. And I'm also, as you guys know by now, I'm just burned out by the outrage cycle. So my first thought is not going to be to be angry at her. And while others might disagree, others who I do love and respect, I don't think that Alex Cooper has done this, has led these women astray in any kind of malicious way. Like, we have actually watched her slowly change and mature and change her values over the last five years or so. And I think that she probably has carried a lot of shame and embarrassment because she knows, most importantly, that a lot of her audience won't be as lucky or privileged as she is. But most importantly, and this actually is a full circle moment from an episode that I did about her almost a year ago, which we're gonna talk about. But most importantly, I think that she has realized that you can have all of the money, all of the success, all of the access, all the booze, all of the hot sex, everything that you want, and you still won't feel fulfilled. And so I'm hoping that that is the lesson that her audience takes away from this new chapter. So immediately after Alex Cooper posted her bump photos on Instagram, the right wing discourse erupted. It was like alarms went off on X. For example, one person said, the same Alex Cooper, who's built a career on telling women to stay single, abort their babies and embrace their inner ho, is celebrating her new pregnancy with her. You can't make this shit up, folks. My friend Link Lauren said Alex Cooper got rich telling young women to stay Reckless, promiscuous, and single, while she lives a stable and traditional life behind the scenes. If her audience ever grows up, her business model falls apart. She is a phony. Now, there was another tweet that has been deleted. But Brad Wilcox, who is a friend of mine and he runs the Family Institute at the University of Virginia, he made a post and he said, you know, she's doing all of these traditional things in private while saying all of these promiscuous sexual things publicly. She's living this double life. A lot of people attacked him. He ended up taking down that tweet. But that was a sentiment that was shared by a lot of people. And so I want to be fair here, because since her marriage, she hasn't really been living traditionally behind the scenes. Like, it has all been very well publicized and well documented. Like, for example, her wedding was in vogue, and it was stunning. I ate up every bit of that content because I thought she looked lovely and it was a beautiful wedding. Now, she is also, which we talked about just a couple of weeks ago on an episode, but she has very obviously attempted to switch her brand from being Alex's life centric and being, you know, dating and sex all the time and F men, where now she's kind of in the passenger seat and is interviewing other people. You know, she's trying to do serious things like, like Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris, but also, you know, stars from Love Island. But she's no longer the central focus. And possibly the most trad thing she's done thus far is that she handed her media empire, everything that she built over the last decade over to her husband, and he now runs it. Now, that's probably the thing that she's been the most coy about, because she runs around and she does all these interviews talking about how she's, you know, this feminist media mogul, she's an empowered girl boss, she runs unwell, she hires no men. It's a female led company. Meanwhile, she's focusing on the podcast, and her husband is the one with the corner office allegedly yelling at her employees and running her company. But moving on from that alleged insight, even last year, she openly talked about their decision for her to go off of her birth control and to start trying to have a baby. That was not a secret. She did an entire episode of her podcast dedicated to that update in her personal life. But obviously she chose not to get pregnant after getting off her birth control because she realized that she just wasn't ready. And this is what she said in that solo episode after she and her husband Matt made that decision. Just watch.
- [04:03]
B
I want to grind at work, and I want to be selfish a little longer. I want to enjoy what I've worked so hard for. I want to go on a weekend trip with my husband and. And have no responsibilities after the longest work week. I want to throw unwell parties after a million meetings that week, get on a plane and go fly and have drinks with the daddy gang.
- [04:27]
A
Now, I covered this on an episode of the show last year, and the one thing that I did say that I admired her for was the. That she was so honest. She did not lie about the reasons why they were not gonna have a baby. She intentionally sat down behind the microphone and said, I'm going to be selfish. I'm going to go party. I am going to enjoy the millions of dollars that I have, and that is what my priority is. I'm not going to feel guilty about it. That is my. Like, I appreciate the fact that she was not trying to pretend that it was anything that it was not. And I do think that kind of honesty, even though I disagree with what she's saying, I do think that that honesty is refreshing. Now, that podcast episode came out last June. June of 2025, less than a year ago. And this is just so. It's so perfect. The timing is so perfect to me, because it clearly shows, in my opinion, how unsustainable and how fulfilling her choices were. You know, she just wanted to grind. She wanted to drink, she wanted to go party. She wanted to have wild sex with her husband after a drunken night. She wanted to be selfish. She wanted to enjoy the tens of millions of dollars that she was making. Like, that was the priority. She was excited about that. And I'm sure that she had her fun. I'm sure she spent lots of money. I'm sure she had many wild nights that made her happy. But then, give or take six or seven months, if I'm gauging her timeline right, she changed her mind and she got pregnant. Probably because all of that, the drinking, the partying, the just being carefree and selfish, it all just ends up feeling vapid and meaningless when there is something that is so obviously more significant that is like, looming over your head and not to say looming over your head as if it's this, like, awful, dreadful thing. But I'm more so trying to say that obviously they were talking about having a family. Obviously they were talking about her getting pregnant. She was off of birth control. That thought of having a baby was most likely always in the back of her mind as she was trying to enjoy herself on a crazy, wild night out at St. Barts or wherever the hell she was. I'm sure that that was always lingering in the back of her mind. And those thoughts of having a baby and starting a family won out a lot faster than I anticipated they would. Like, if we're being honest, after I watched that episode of hers back in June, I did not expect to see an Alex Cooper pregnancy for years. Like, I thought it was gonna be. You know, she's 38 years old. She's finally done. She's done partying, she's over it. Then she's gonna have a baby. It happened in less than six months. And all of this is so interesting because this really is a trend with Alex Hooper. Like, I feel like the Internet has literally watched her grow up. Like, we have watched her prefrontal cortex develop and realize that the life that she had been selling on her show, the lifestyle that she had been living for the last decade, that she literally built her entire brand on, was not how she wanted to spend the rest of her life. Maybe that it was not the most fulfilling avenue for her. Like, what actually might be fulfilling is getting married and having a baby and finding the perfect supplement for your dog to take. Which is why you should look into Rough Greens. Now, you guys know that I am super careful about what we feed our dogs, and that is why, in this house, we love Rough Greens. Rough Greens makes nutritional supplements that are designed to help fill the gaps left behind by most dog foods. And their newest product, Rough choose, does just that. 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So start your plan today and you will get free meat included with every order in your subscription plus $100 off your first three orders with my code Brett. Just go to goodranchers.com, use code Brett at checkout. That is free meat with every order and $100 off when you start a subscription plan this month only or if you just wanna try it out for one month, you can get $40 off your first order with my code Brett as well. Again, that is goodranchers.com American meat delivered. Now back to this whole thing with Alex Cooper being a trend. I feel like I have told the story so many times and like not to beat a dead hors, everybody loves to but I've talked about this a lot now. But when Alex Cooper got engaged, she literally had to do one of the straight to camera solo podcast episodes and explain herself to her audience. Like it was not as simple as just being like, guys, I found my person. I'm so in love. I'm so excited. I'm so excited for you guys to meet him. No, she had to sit down and go, okay, I can't believe I'm doing this. I know I said that I was never going to get married. I know that I built this podcast on saying screw men and I hate men. I know that I bashed marriage. I know that I have mocked domesticity and I have called marriage regressive. I know I said that marriage was going to hinder my success and my empowerment, but I'm doing it anyway and I'm sorry. And she also, I think waited six weeks after she got engaged to release this information. And obviously, you can argue that she just wanted to be in, you know, premarital bliss, the engagement bubble, all the things. But based on that episode, I would say that she was terrified to tell her audience that she was going to do the thing that she had spent years talking down about. And it made sense because she had a lot to backtrack on, because prior to getting engaged, these are the types of things she would say.
- [09:55]
B
I'm never getting married. When I met my now husband, who I just recently got married to, I literally said to him, we will never get married. And he was like, okay, like, chill. And I was like, it's. You can't change my mind. I just want to be really upfront.
- [10:08]
A
And what changed your mind?
- [10:10]
B
I think, because I recognized that when I knew he earnestly meant it, that he would be with me for the rest of his life without us signing a legal document, without me having a physical ring on my finger, all of that. And it was months and months of him never bringing it up. And he would even. He would even say, like, my partner like this. That I saw the level of respect that he had for what I had initially wanted. And then I went into therapy and reevaluated why was I so intent on not wanting to get married? And I would consider myself a very, like, strong, independent woman who I've always been career driven. Like, I'm gonna go for this until the end, and I'm gonna still be working then until someone rips me out of the chair. And I was always worried that, especially as a woman, it would threaten a man. And I didn't think I could do both. And when I started to have a partner that allowed me to do that, I was like.
- [11:09]
A
And obviously that was a podcast episode from after she got married. And she's reflecting on it. It's wild that she had to go to therapy to figure out why she didn't want to get married. But these were all the things that she had discussed on her podcast, saying, you know, it's going to hold me back. It is regressive. She would laugh about people settling and getting married too early. And then here she was, before the age of 30, deciding to get married. Now, this is kind of a topic for a whole other video, but the fear of marriage being this great inhibitor is so funny to me because it just feels like such a black and white, simplistic way to look at your life. Obviously, marriage is going to inhibit you. You're committing yourself to somebody. You're saying, I'm not going to be with anybody else, that does objectively inhibit some of your freedom. But that's also the whole point, because by limiting your freedom and deepening your relationship with this one person and committing to them, I think you find, at least this was my experience, that you do feel more free and actually more empowered in all of the most important ways, because you have security, you have stability, you have somebody who loves you, who is always in your corner. Hopefully, if you married a good person, that is empowerment. That, in my opinion, is true freedom. And so I feel like after years and years of calling marriage this regressive, terrible trap, shuddering at the idea of settling down with a man, I'm guessing that she figured that out. And yet, ironically, even though she's saying all the things and she did get married, she also couldn't fully kick the habit. Because in that same I'm engaged, I need to accept, explain this to my audience video, it's like she couldn't fully kick the habit. Or maybe she was just trying to appease her audience because she was still a bit passive aggressive towards women who had done it differently, who, you know, didn't wait, who got married younger, who she did feel were settling or just trying to get married for the sake of marriage. Whatever it was, she felt like she had done it the right way and everybody else was still figuring it out. Whatever, whatever. The point is, she obviously did change her mind enough to actually get the ring on her finger and moving on. That same shift happened, I think, when it came to having children, because she used to say publicly on her show that she wasn't sure. Sure that she wanted to be mom. She didn't think she wanted to have kids. But obviously that changed. And back in 2024, she was a guest on Paris Hilton's podcast, and you can see how nervous and apprehensive she was to acknowledge the fact that she did want to be a mom. Just watch.
- [13:13]
B
I definitely want kids. And I think something has recently changed in me. And I don't know if this has happened for you, but, like, something all of a sudden recently has just kind of started to give me baby fever. And I'm just starting to see myself more and, like, that maternal light that years ago I would have been like, I don't even know if I want to be a mom. Like, I really didn't even know. Like, do I want kids? Like, I was one of those people at one point in my life that was like, maybe I don't want kids. And in the past couple years, that definitely shifted. But now this past year, I've been like, kind of getting like, whoa, I. I think, yeah.
- [13:45]
A
And I mean, we can analyze her and guess what changed her mind. Whether it is biology, the clock ticking. But I think personally, it's when you find a good man who you are committing to, obviously you look at him and you're like, I want 10 million little ones of you running around. So I'm guessing that shifted with her. But another interesting thing to me is that whenever she would bring up this shift on her podcast, even now, she was still giving disclaimers to her audience. Just watch.
- [14:06]
B
Do you want kids? I do. When I was. If. I think if you asked me in my 20s, I really didn't think I did. I think it was just like a lot of self work that I had to do on myself. Not saying that like you have to do self work to want to have kids. It just for me, in the place I was in my life, I couldn't even fathom it.
- [14:22]
A
Yes.
- [14:23]
B
And then something changed. And I think that's okay that I was just like, you know what? I actually think I do.
- [14:28]
A
You don't have to do self work. You don't have to change. It's totally fine. I'm on this path, but it's okay. You don't have to just keep doing the things that I taught you. Don't go to therapy to decide you want to get married. Don't do self work to figure out why you don't want to have a baby. I mean, it's like those disclaimers, it felt like she was covering to me. And so between her behaviors and feeling like she owed people an explanation, like she had to hide this engagement for six weeks, it leads me to think that she probably felt a bit humbled by life and this change in her values. Possibly because she wonders if the women that she has been instructing for almost a decade, that she has been inspiring and encouraging, will have the freedom to grow up and change their minds like she did. Now, in a now viral post, my friend Gina Florio called all of this out. She wrote, the common response to this news is that Alex Cooper is somehow leading her audience down a path that she herself is not choosing. But what is happening here is actually the exact same feminist dream. A woman participates in hookup culture as much as she wants. When she's in her prime. She sleeps around, she has casual sex, she gets the ick. She dumps men, she gets dumped, she has summer flings, she gets abortions if needed. She's hot, she has Pretty privilege, and she isn't afraid to use it. But when she feels like the time is right, she settles down with a high value man only because it's her choice, not because she feels pressured by societal standards or a ticking biological clock. This man does not care about her past because he wouldn't dare judge a woman for expressing herself sexually. It's 2026, after all. They have a beautiful wedding and her dress is stunning. She gets pregnant when she feels like she's ready to take on motherhood. She trades in her promiscuous days only when she wants to on her own terms. And the perfect man, she finds, is more than happy to go along with her timeline because he respects her and her desires and he doesn't want to lose her. Alex has quite literally lived out the perfect feminist blueprint thus far. You see, the only problem is this modern feminist blueprint usually only works for exceptionally successful, gorgeous women with influence. With exception, of course. We're talking about the rule here. Models, actresses, wealthy bachelorettes and entrepreneurs. This is why we are seeing such high rates of childless unmarried women. They followed the early years of the blueprint, spending their 20s and even most of their 30s dating, casually, believing that they too could find a high value man when they're older and eventually sick of the dating scene. And why wouldn't they be able to? They look at the famous rich celebs and influencers and think, hey, I can do that too. If they postpone marriage and kids until they're ready, so can I. Now, the thing I'm gonna add in here is like an example of, you know, if this celebrity is pushing having a baby off until she's 42, she's frozen all of her eggs, it works out for her. I can do that as well. But of course, we know that that does not always work out. So Gina continues and says, but everyday women simply aren't on the same playing field as women like Alex Cooper. Few will fully understand this. Many will try to make excuses as to why this isn't true. Brace yourself for the outlier stories, even if you don't see anything morally wrong with hookup culture that Alex Cooper praises on her show. Young women would be smart to understand the real world and that you have a much greater chance at locking down a high value man when you are younger and a bit more austere. Sorry, I don't make the rules. And out of everything I saw online in response to Alex's announcement, this felt the most astute because it was facing the uncomfortable fact that even if you don't like her values or the things that she's done, she has been successful. So why. And will it work for other women? That is the main point. And of course, yes, there are going to be outliers. Of course there are women who have tried to date starting in their early 20s, they tried to find a husband. They just haven't been successful. Nobody's saying that there is no hope. I am not one of those people who's like, you hit the wall. Like, no, that's just obviously not true. But Gina's point, unfortunately is very accurate. Like Alex Cooper being who she is, she had the freedom and privilege that other women might not have in terms of access to men, the types of men, fertility, all of it. And ironically, this is the craziest part. This is something that Alex has even talked about on her podcast. And this is just the most perfect full circle moment because this exact conversation took place on episode two of Call Her Daddy all the way back in 2018. And in this episode, she and her co host at the time, Sofia Franklin, who's about to release a tell all book about her experiences with Alex, which, which were very excited about, but they were talking about the differences between women who were fives or sixes, so lower on the totem pole, and the womens who were nines and tens, specifically saying that the women who were fives needed to, quote, unquote, die for that D, if you get what I'm saying, and that they should consider themselves lucky that they were getting laid in the first place. They should prioritize men because it was always going to be more work for them since they were less desirable and less attractive. But for the nines and tens, they didn't have to work so hard. The men would flock to them. It was totally fine. Now obviously everybody's going to have a different opinion on Alex Hooper's attractiveness. I'm not here to debate that today. But like conventionally speaking, Alex Cooper is a athletic, skinny, not unattractive blonde girl living in New York City, dating around. And at the time that she met her husband, she was already making tens of millions of dollars. She was desirable. And especially as her success and her net worth grew, she was one of those lucky women who had the freedom to screw around. And that premise that Alex Cooper laid out in episode two of her podcast really dictated the rest of her relationship trajectory. Like that was the foundation of her philosophy in terms of her personal life, but also her brand. Alex Cooper was one of the lucky ones. She got to screw around like a man and not commit. She got to build her career, say f the patriarchy. I hate men, I never want to have kids. I'm not going to get married. And she still got her happy fairy tale ending. But what about the women not in her position that followed her advice or advice like hers, and are now single, in their 30s, maybe even 40s, wondering why they gave themselves up for free for so many years, why they refused to commit, talked down to men, whatever it was, when now they are feeling the pressure of their biological clock ticking. That is the saddest part of this entire story. And so while yes, I do think that Alex Cooper did lead women astray, but I also am kind of tired of the outrage or forcing myself to feel angry over all of it. Because to be honest, if you look at her life like she had gross influences encouraging all of this. At the time that she was building her brand, she was rewarded financially and also in terms of her skills, success and status every single step of the way. And sure, she could have done differently. She could have known better or behaved better, but I'm not surprised that she didn't, is what I'm trying to say. And it also has worked out for her like, it's not like she crashed and burned in front of the world. She's having to face the consequences. She's lonely, she's broke, she's infertile, and she's still lying to her audience about how amazing it is. No, none of that is real. She won. She is happy. She got her happy ending. She had her cake and she was able to to eat it too. And I think that really frustrates people. And so when I went online after her announcement, I saw countless posts from people looking for something to complain about rather than being happy about the fact that she is bringing a precious life into the world, that she is becoming a mom, and that she is sharing that joy in this new chapter with her entire audience, I saw people who, in all honesty, probably would be happier if she did crash and burn, if she waited so long, if she did the partying and the drinking that she was talking about, and then if she just continued to wait, if she continued drinking and partying, doing all of the vapid things, waited so long that by the time she changed her mind, she was unable to get pregnant and have a child just so that they could use her as an example. I mean, it reminds me of the time that somebody told me it would be better for them and their content, their work if Trump lost the election in 2024. Even though it would be better for the country if he won, it would be better for this individual if he lost. So that there would be more things to complain about and fight against. Like what? What are we doing here? And sure, wagging fingers and complaining about her being angry at everything. It is the easier route, but the harder thing to contend with is that somebody took a path that you did not believe was right or was healthy. That maybe, yes, they led people astray and yet it still worked out for them. It's complex and it's nuanced. And believe it or not, I am also guessing that Alex Hooper feels that sort of way. I am sure that she is feeling that complex emotion because all of the feminist blueprint success aside, I would put personally guess maybe I'm projecting, but I would guess that deep down, just based on the way that she has behaved around all of these announcements and conversations about marriage and family, I think that she probably knows that this might not be the case for all of her listeners. Deep down, I'm guessing that she wonders how she would feel if she had done things differently. And I'm sure she probably feels humbled by how much she has so publicly changed over the last decade. And that is fine. It happens to all of us. We all change our minds. We all wonder what could have been. We second guess the decisions that we've made. That is just part of growing up. And she has had to do it very publicly. She has a lot of eyes on her. She has a lot of people that would hope that she fails. Will she apologize to her audience for leading them astray? Will she acknowledge the fact that she really has changed her mind without the passive aggressive comments about people who did things differently? I don't know. Probably not. I'm not holding my breath. But I do hope that her audience at least takes her change as a lesson for themselves. Even if she does not express it express explicitly. I hope that they learned that marriage is not regressive, that it is not settling, that it does not mean that you lose all of your freedom and you lose yourself to this man. I hope that they learn that partying and drinking and sleeping around and playing with your $110 million fortune might only fulfill you for a whopping six months. And for her own sake, since she has long been vulnerable about the fact that she has been worried about her fertility, I am so glad that it didn't take her longer to figure that out. And I can't believe that I am saying this, but maybe, maybe more of her audience should take some of the advice, maybe some of the insight from that episode two of her podcast. Because a celebrity, an influencer, a New York City 10, their experience might not be your own. The opportunities might not be the same ones that you are offered. I'm not saying take her vulgar advice and go prioritize having sloppy sex with any man who looks at you, but maybe consider the difference between somebody like her and the access that she has, the opportunities that she has, and the day to day American woman. It's a really uncomfortable conversation to have, but it's an important distinction to make.