David Jett Explains The Hawk Tuah Girl
Spit on this thang.
In 1975 an advertising exec named Gary Dahl was having drinks with a friend at a bar. I’m assuming that since he was at a bar, Dahl was drunk. The other reason that leads me to assume he was drunk is that it was on this night that Dahl came up with the idea for the Pet Rock. The Pet Rock was one of those fads like the mood ring and the hula hoop with the exception that it didn’t do anything, and you couldn’t do anything with it. It was literally a rock. Sure, it had funny packaging. The Pet Rock came in a tiny cardboard box with little breathing holes and a bed of straw for it to sit on. It also came with an instruction manual full of jokey instructions on how to care for your new…rock. The Pet Rock only lasted around a year, but it made Dahl a millionaire before people finally came to their senses and stopped buying…rocks.
In the early 80’s, spurred on by the music video fashion trends of M-TV and the willingness of teenagers to wear anything no matter how stupid it looks, the Bugle Boy clothing company foisted Parachute Pants onto the world. The design was based on flight pants like an Air Force pilot would sport. Made of nylon, these ridiculous looking puffy pants looked out of place everywhere except break dancing competitions. Still, thousands (millions?) of New Wave wannabes safety danced into mainstream department stores like Dillards to grab their parachute pants. I was out shopping one night with my girlfriend at the time, and she wanted me to get a pair of these godawful trousers. Momentarily indulging her, I tried on the pants. She thought I looked cute. I thought I looked like a backup dancer on a Janet Jackson tour. I’ve always had a saying “fashion is for people with no style.” Spoiler alert: I did not buy the pants and that was the one and only time I ever wore a pair, however briefly. But I will say this for Parachute Pants…they were as funny as a Pet Rock and unlike the Pet Rock, Parachute Pants actually did something: they made you look like an idiot.
This brings us to the Hawk Tuah Girl. Her real name is Haliey Welch, a spirited young gal who was born in Belfast, TN (a town about an hour outside of Nashville) to a mother who apparently didn’t know how to spell Hailey. Hawk Tuah Girl, as she will be referred to for the rest of this piece, gained worldwide notoriety due to, you guessed it, a TikTok video. For those of you who are older and aren’t familiar with TikTok, it’s Instagram with only videos and anyone under the age of 20 watches it 18 hours a day. She was in the Broadway tourist area of downtown Nashville where she was partying with friends and trying not to get thrown off a roof by Morgan Wallen.
Hawk Tuah Girl was interviewed in the street on the topic of sex by the social media interview team of Kenan and Kel…wait, that’s wrong…it’s Tim and Dee. She was asked “what’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?” Now, of course, the real answer is “get in the bed with him,” but her answer was “you gotta give ‘em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang!” This video clip went viral and was eventually viewed by every single human on the planet and maybe some people on the International Space Station.
I’ve had sex a decent number of times in my life. Never once did a woman spit on my thang. I’ve seen it done in porn, but I assumed it was just something women did in those videos, like when women fuck their entire family. And I do feel sorry for Hawk Tuah Girl. It’s going to be fairly impossible for her to date someone who hasn’t seen her in that video. Now she will have to not only spit on any random dick she’s faced with, but she will have to actually say “Hawk Tuah” when she does it. If she doesn’t, the guy is going to be deeply disappointed, like he went to see Jimmy Eat World and they didn’t play The Middle.
After her video appearance went viral, Hawk Tuah Girl signed with management company The Penthouse (who won out in a fierce bidding war with The Hustler and The Beaver Hunt.) Jonnie Forster, the founder of The Penthouse, recently sat for an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Jonnie said, “You root for someone like this who comes from a poor background, who has done right by her life and been taking care of her grandma and worked very hard in a factory job. It’s so beautiful to see the internet picking the right person to make famous.” The internet knew none of this. The internet didn’t know she was taking care of her grandma. The internet didn’t know she had a factory job. The internet just likes dick jokes.
Jonnie went on to say that they have turned down multiple offers for Hawk Tuah Girl to be in movies and to sing on tv shows. Apparently, she’s neither an actor nor a singer. She’s not a musician. She’s never done stand-up comedy. She doesn’t do much of anything entertainment wise but that didn’t stop Jonnie from comparing her to Dolly Parton. And from then going on to say “It’s Rolling Stone calling her America’s sweetheart and the hero we all need now.” A hero? Was someone’s dick on fire and she spit on it and put it out before it spread to the curtains and then the entire orphanage burned down?
The real question is: will Hawk Tuah Girl be able to make a legacy from this one entertaining yet ultimately dumb viral clip? Will she become a millionaire for an impromptu thought she had while drunk? Will she be forgotten a year from now?
No one can predict this. It all comes down to when people decide to stop buying rocks.