Highlights
How beautiful. Truly, that is the initial reaction I had to the news that podcaster and influencer Alex Cooper is expecting her first child with her husband. It’s important to begin there. Every baby is a blessing, and that baby will be blessed to be born to a mother and father that are happy to welcome him or her into the world after committing to each other first in marriage. But Cooper has some atoning to do.
She’s been one of the loudest mouthpieces for some of the most destructive ideas on social media for women, and frankly everyone else. Even as many women, including some on the left, have begun moving away from the hook-up culture, or at least openly questioning the damage it has wrought, Cooper has remained adamantly for it.
Her content is loaded with crassness and profanity, and her advice to young women includes the following:
“Use him before he uses you.”
“Don’t catch feelings.”
“You do not need to be denying yourself pleasure to prove some arbitrary point.”
Cooper has described her podcast as: “a bunch of predominantly women that are excited to engage in a roller coaster where we don't know what happens next.”
Except that we do know what happens next: STIs, unplanned pregnancies, abortions, infertility, emotional damage, and the general destruction of dating and marriage, leaving people lonely and uncoupled much later into life than they hoped.
Despite more data than ever on the damage of the hook-up culture, Cooper has gotten rich promoting it. And now she has opened the trap door and escaped at least some of the consequences of her lies by doing the very thing she profits from encouraging women not to do: getting married and becoming pregnant right away. These two things are luxuries for young, beautiful, educated, and wealthy women still in their fertile years. But unfortunately for the countless women who follow her advice, when the bill comes, they will have nothing but heartache and regret.
Even the ordinary denizens of social media know this. As one X user wrote:
alex cooper turning ‘call her daddy’ into straight mommy content after years of pushing hookup culture and zero consequences is the biggest grift in podcast history. she made millions telling girls to sleep around then quietly locks down a rich producer for the perfect pregnancy glow-up modern feminism stays winning on both sides while the fans who followed her advice stay single and broke.
Another X user called her actions “incredibly subversive.”
It is subversive, and it’s a part of a broader trend wherein political and social elites aggressively push anti-marriage and anti-family agendas, even as they increasingly return to these core institutions in their own lives and benefit from the stability that marriage and family life provide.
Cooper is part of a broader trend where liberal elites aggressively push anti-marriage and anti-family agendas, even as they return to these core institutions in their own lives.
As has been documented extensively on these pages, marriage is one of the best predictors of positive mental, emotional, and financial health for men, women, and children. Moreover, research increasingly indicates that contrary to the narrative that sexual exploration before marriage is empowering, having multiple sexual partners prior to marriage is associated with lower emotional and sexual satisfaction after marriage, as well as a higher likelihood of divorce.
A woman’s best chance of having a happy and fulfilling adulthood is to tune out the likes of Alex Cooper. Instead, she sells out stadiums, has a documentary on Hulu, and an exclusive deal with Spotify.
And while it’s wonderful that Cooper is having a baby with her husband, in some ways, she is continuing to perpetuate her lies. Because it furthers the myth that decades spent sleeping around can eventually lead to wealth, a husband, and the joy of a baby bump reveal, when for most women and men, there are no such happy endings.
In my opinion, Alex Cooper is a grifter and a liar. While I wish her every happiness with her new baby, she should stop lying to women for profit.
Ashley E. McGuire is a Contributing Editor at the Institute for Family Studies and the author of Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female (Regnery, 2017).
*Photo credit: Shutterstock
