Wait, Is Alex Cooper Actually the Victim Here?

If you've been on TikTok for any amount of time recently, you've likely come across a video about the Alex Cooper vs. Alix Earle feud that nobody has fully explained.

It's still unresolved, but the more I see, the more I'm #TeamAlix. Anecdotal reports just suggest that she's an actually nice person — while this week, a Vanity Fair exposé came out about Alex Cooper's company being a toxic place to work, and her husband Matt Kaplan being, by all accounts, the absolute worst.

I literally signed up for a free trial of Vanity Fair yesterday to read the story (that's a whole other issue), and it gave me almost nothing.

What it did give me, though, was this: most of the decisions at Unwell are apparently made by Matt Kaplan. Not Alex. Her husband. The one allegedly screaming at employees, commenting on their bodies, asking about their sex lives. The one who, when someone called a move against Alix Earle a little mean-girl, said: "We're all mean girls at this company."

Unwell built its entire identity on women saying the thing they're not supposed to say. Create the space, say the quiet part out loud, make women feel less alone. That's the whole brand.

And yet the more I read, the more I kept thinking: what if Alex is less the villain here than we think? What if she's just the name on the door?

That's not an excuse. But it might be the more honest story, and honestly, it's a sadder one.