She might not have the largest following on TikTok, but to her five million followers Alix Earle is the biggest thing on the platform. In an interview with The Howard Stern Show, the popular influencer said it’s not the “Get Ready With Me” videos or bikini pics that made her famous, it was an acne flare up that led to her sudden success.
“When I started out, I had no idea and I was trying to be picture perfect,” she said about her start as an influencer. “I thought that was the way to go. Then it honestly was the summer when I was at probably at my lowest point. I was dealing with a bunch of acne and I started posting about it.”
Earle says she was at her lowest point and when she started to post about her acne struggles followers started to respond to her. She says it was probably due to a hormonal imbalance, but the more she posted the more people commented positively. “I had a brand video due and my manager was like, ‘Okay, Alex…’ and I was like, ‘I cannot do it.’ My acne was so bad, I could not post it. Then I thought, ‘Wait, what kind of like message am I sending out here?’ It was so scary posting the first video with my skin raw without makeup. I refreshed it for like 30 minutes. I thought people were gonna say mean things, and then it was just an overwhelmingly nice, positive, supportive community.”
“I’m looking at you now I don’t see a pimple or anything. So how did you get rid of all that acne?” Stern asked Earle, who said she was on her way to a final exam.
“I went on Accutane. That stuff clears your right up. It’s amazing,” she said.
When it came to her breast implants, which of course was a topic of interest for Stern, Earle said she was open with her followers about having an augmentation because she didn’t want to promote false standards. “I don’t want to put it out there to other girls who are watching this,” she explained. “I know it looks like, ‘Hey, I look good’ and all this. But at the same point, you’ve got to be really careful putting something into your body.”
While Earle might not be the most followed, she’s surely the most relatable influencer on the app, a title she’s worked hard to maintain. “It’s crazy, because I was trying for the opposite for three years. And then the second I stopped trying to be the pretty, picture-perfect girl is when things started to take off.”
