{"id":804028,"date":"2026-07-15T18:46:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T18:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/804028\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T18:46:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T18:46:19","slug":"bunnie-xo-and-jelly-rolls-divorce-has-coined-a-whole-new-genre-of-celebrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/804028\/","title":{"rendered":"Bunnie Xo and Jelly Roll\u2019s divorce has coined a whole new genre of celebrity."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Gone Girl\u2019s \u201ccool girl\u201d monologue has been dissected to death, and for good reason; little else has so effectively captured the bind that straight women are in. In 2012, Gillian Flynn wrote about the burdens of the cool girl in her novel, and eventually, it was culturally canonized by Rosamund Pike in the 2014 film adaptation<\/a>. \u201cBeing the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex,\u201d Flynn wrote. \u201cCool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cool Girl is ostensibly the girl all the guys want to date; the hope, for the Cool Girl, is to hold on to her coolness even after marriage and children harden her to her husband\u2019s desires. And no one did a better job being a Cool Girl Wife than Bunnie Xo.<\/p>\n

Married to preternaturally annoying country rapper Jelly Roll since 2016, Bunnie Xo was an especially cool Cool Girl. They eloped in Las Vegas after knowing each other for just a year<\/a>, after meeting at one of Jelly Roll\u2019s concerts. Back then, he was a struggling musician whose records (Sobriety Sucks and the following year\u2019s Addiction Kills) weren\u2019t charting, while he lived in a van with no financial security.<\/p>\n

But Bunnie Xo was a steadfast partner, and an especially cool one. She supported him through his recovery from a cocaine and pill addiction, as well as his dramatic weight loss<\/a>, which he says has revolutionized his physical health. She has helped him raise his two children<\/a>, assisting him in getting custody while maintaining their relationship with their mother. To fund his nascent career, she did sex work to pay his bills<\/a>. When he cheated, she stayed, giving interviews about how she\u2019d be willing to bring another woman into their bedroom<\/a> in order to keep him from cheating again.<\/p>\n

If this was all said and done to keep her family together, it didn\u2019t work: In June, Jelly Roll filed for divorce<\/a>, just a few months after the couple had been trying for a baby through IVF. All has been revealed not through typical celebrity statements via People or TMZ gossip or joint Instagram posts, but through Bunnie Xo\u2019s podcast, Dumb Blonde. Jelly Roll has still said almost nothing<\/a> about the split, except that they remain friends and there was no infidelity. Bunnie Xo remains the custodian of the story of their breakup; even without his voice, she has remained sympathetic to him.<\/p>\n

In an episode of Dumb Blonde, Bunnie Xo lays out how they parted ways, saying that although she had wanted to work things out in therapy, he hadn\u2019t. \u201cIt took me a month and a half now to respect that,\u201d she said. \u201cMy husband and I are ending this marriage on the best possible terms you could ever have a divorce.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happens to the Cool Girl when she gets a divorce? There are only a few options; one is to go nuclear, to unleash all the pent-up frustration that accrued as you were trying to accommodate your husband in the coolest way possible. The other is how Bunnie Xo is handling her divorce, which is to try to seem totally chill about it, often to the detriment of her own public persona.<\/p>\n

Bunnie Xo has a long history of making her marital strife her fault, even when the public might disagree. During their relationship, Jelly Roll had a nearly yearlong affair, a betrayal she wrote about in her memoir Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic, which came out this spring. \u201cInstead of looking at him and being like, \u2018This is your fault,\u2019 I looked within myself and was like, Why do I keep attracting these types of men?\u201d she told Kelly Clarkson<\/a> earlier this year. \u201cI have been given so many second chances in my life. I truly believe that man deserved a second chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her description of their breakup, in fact, feels more sympathetic to Jelly Roll than to herself. \u201cIn a twin-flame relationship, there\u2019s a runner and a chaser. He\u2019s the runner, I\u2019m the chaser. I stopped chasing him,\u201d she said on her podcast. \u201cThis isn\u2019t what you guys think this is. Nobody cheated on the other person. We served our purpose for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, she\u2019s encouraging available women to slide into her ex\u2019s DMs and shoot their shot. \u201cMy husband is ready to date. He\u2019s raring and ready to go. He\u2019s all hopped up on testosterone. He\u2019s even started dating, which is great\u2014I love that,\u201d she said on her podcast<\/a>. \u201cI think he wants the complete opposite of me, which is what he deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bunnie Xo is well within her rights to share details of her divorce, but what\u2019s peculiar are the kinds of details she\u2019s offering. In her initial podcast episode, she mostly reassured her audience that her husband was free to do what he pleased, and that she respected his decision to leave the marriage, all while she helps raise his children. There\u2019s no rage or scores to be settled; instead, she seems to be doing a strange kind of PR for her ex, telling the audience that they\u2019re still friends and it\u2019s all totally cool. She deleted the podcast episode announcing their split, but seemingly to protect their public personas as they navigate a breakup that\u2019s becoming more infamous than their marriage. Bunnie Xo also says they\u2019ll still try for a baby in order to co-parent, though she admitted that IVF left her feeling emotionally and physically \u201cwrecked<\/a>,\u201d an experience that sounds like hers and hers alone, while her husband was touring and working.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019re Witnessing a Whole New Genre of Celebrity Divorce. It Took a Very Specific Ex-Wife to Mastermind It.
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Bunnie Xo is in a bind. To be too angry at Jelly Roll (warranted or not) would turn her into another shrieking harpy, another woman left by her more famous husband right as his fame crested into another echelon. She\u2019s left with trying to maintain her Cool Girl status through a divorce, much like she did through his earlier affair. She reassures strangers that they can safely shoot their shot with Jelly Roll, while still calling him \u201cmy husband.\u201d She has recently alluded to her own heartbreak\u2014needing IVs because, in her depression<\/a> about her relationship falling apart, she wasn\u2019t eating\u2014but the blame lands on no one but herself. That\u2019s what the Cool Girls does: She internalizes the failure of a relationship so that her husband (or ex-husband) can remain clean.<\/p>\n

Bunnie isn\u2019t sitting on her hands at home\u2014she was recently seen kissing a reality star<\/a> at the bar her estranged husband owns in Nashville. (Cue a sea of \u201cGood for her<\/a>\u201d Jessica Walter GIFs.) But even in her divorce, she\u2019s still performing Cool Girl bona fides: Please don\u2019t get mad at my husband, know that my husband is still a good man, my husband and I are staying friends, go on ahead and fuck my husband. Maybe all of that is true, but it\u2019s also no longer her responsibility, a story she doesn\u2019t have to tell anymore.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the trouble with being a Cool Girl. It feels like a lifetime appointment.<\/p>\n

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