Alex Cooper of 'Call Her Daddy' said she would stop editing Instagram photos after a viral video 'exposed' her for altering a picture
- "Call Her Daddy" host Alex Cooper spoke about a photo editing controversy on the podcast.
- In the episode, she spoke about being "exposed" on TikTok for editing a birthday photo.
- The host said that she wasn't going to edit photos she posted on Instagram again.
Alexandra "Alex" Cooper said that she would never edit another Instagram photo after a viral TikTok "exposed" her for altering a photo from her birthday party.
In Wednesday's episode of her Spotify-exclusive podcast "Call Her Daddy," titled "I Got Caught Photoshopping," Cooper said she edited the photo using the app Facetune because she felt "uncomfortable" with how her body looked. The host added that she's "absolutely" edited photos of herself in the past.
The controversy arose after a viral TikTok compared two versions of the same photo that Cooper and a friend had both posted on Instagram. Cooper said that while she posted the edited version of the photo, her friend Lauren posted an unedited version of it in a "photo dump" with pictures from their trip to Las Vegas for Cooper's birthday.
According to Cooper, the next morning, she woke up to a vulgar Instagram message telling her to take her own life, along with a link to a TikTok that she said compared the photos side by side. It was not immediately clear which TikTok Cooper was referring to.
A video comparing the two birthday photos of Cooper, uploaded on August 27 by TikTok user @jillyyyygirllll, amassed over 184,000 likes.
"Literally the reason why there are unrealistic body standards," the caption on the video reads.
Some comments on the video were critical of Cooper, with some speaking about their own body image and saying that beauty standards on social media had dissuaded them from posting photos of themselves. But others defended Cooper and said that the onus for unrealistic body standards was on the systems that made women feel pressured to edit their photos.
Cooper said that she hasn't watched the video and didn't engage with its negative comments. She also hasn't opened TikTok since the incident, she said.
In the episode, Cooper said she was out to dinner with family and friends in Vegas when she and Lauren took a photo together before heading to a club. But she wasn't satisfied when she looked at the photos, Cooper said.
"I remember looking at myself in these photos - I was wearing this tan dress - and feeling uncomfortable with my body. I didn't like how my body looked," she said on Wednesday's podcast. "That whole night I felt so good and confident and happy, and then I saw those photos and I was upset." She edited the image on Facetune before uploading it while in the car en route to the club, she said.
She also said that she was "never going to edit a photo" for Instagram "again," hoping that others will follow suit.
"People may be like, 'oh my god, you're just admitting this because you got caught,'" Cooper said on the podcast. "Yeah, but also no, but yes. I think in a way it's almost like an intervention."