Who is the Hawk Tuah Girl? Viral TikTok Meme, Explained

Have you spent the last week seeing posts about someone called “Hawk Tuah Girl” and thinking to yourself, “I can’t be bothered with more information.” If so, you and I are in the same boat. Well, curiosity got the best of me when I saw that Ms. Tuah was reportedly signing with a talent agency. That rumor has since been walked back, but I had already seen the video and sort of figured out what was going on with the girl going viral for her fun sex tip. So now, I will pass that information on to you.

Otherwise known as Hailey Welch, Hawk Tuah Girl is rising to prominence after being featured in a man-on-the-street interview from creators Tim & Dee TV. In the video, she’s asked “What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?” Her response is what’s made her go viral.

“You gotta give ’em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang,” she exclaimed. Words can’t really capture her whole vibe, so let’s run the tape.

Do you get it now? “Hawk tuah” is like, the sound of the guy in the back of an old Western saloon using a spittoon, but she’s talking about sex. It is funny. Whether or not it’s more than a week’s worth of virality levels of funny is up to you.

Yeah. It might be helpful to conceptualize this as a PG-13 version of the “Damn, Daniel” moment. She said something funny, the internet is loving it, and people are quickly scrambling to figure out how to capitalize on it. There was even a rumor that she was going to sign with United Talent Agency, but TMZ is now reporting that no such deal is actually in the works. Someone should figure out something to do with this girl. She’s a good sport with a lot of charisma, which is like half the job of being famous.

Might I interest you in a hat? Or maybe a T-shirt that reads, “If she don’t hawk tuah, I don’t want to talk tuah”? Admittedly, that one is clever. Tim & Dee TV have created an official merch line to capitalize on their viral moment, but it’s unclear if Welch is getting a cut or not.

Where Welch is definitely making her money is from the official Hawk Tuah hats. The trucker-style caps are produced by Jason Poteete, who owns an apparel company called Fathead Threads and has reportedly known Welch for years. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Poteete shared that the merch has been doing big business. They’ve sold more than 2,000 hats already (the signed $50 version sold out quickly), and given the cheapest one is $32.78, the company must have brought in at least $65,000 on hats alone. Poteete wouldn’t say how much of that is going to Welch but said he wanted to make sure she saw some of the money being made off of her.

“Of course she hasn’t gotten a dime from the first viral video that went out,” Poteete told the magazine. “Nobody was asking permission for her to do nothing, neither. I just wanted her to get some profit off of this deal.”

No, people are just trolling. Tippah County Tribune, a satirical social-media account, shared a post on Facebook in which they claimed that Welch (whom they identify as “Hailey Wellington”) had lost her job as a preschool teacher at “Epstein Day School.” Their fake story included children “spitting on each other and everything else” in the wake of the viral video. We actually don’t know what Welch’s real job is, although several Instagram fan pages identify her as a bartender. If that actually is the case, I’d bet good money she’s getting tipped really well right now.

This post has been updated.