As culture has accelerated, clothes have lost some of their class associations, but our hyper-niche taste has given them new meaning.

TESS POLLOK: What does it feel like to be writing so much about girls and the online?

BIZ SHERBERT: It feels crazy. It’s weird to be learning more and participating in it, to a certain degree, but obviously when you’re writing on a deadline there’s an amount of immersion you have to do into it – girlblogging is definitely a huge part of it, but it’s definitely about getting into the deepest, darkest part of femininity. Because even as an outsider in the community I still have a lot of that in me. I think a lot of people talk about this in terms of dissociative feminism, which is a term I see people use online [to describe girlblogging.] I was actually talking to someone the other day about how dissociative it is to write about it, like, to critique something you identify with so heavily – it’s dissociative, which I think is a normal feeling.

POLLOK: Yeah, we recently did a piece on the e-girl with Soph Vanderbilt and Sierra Armor, and it had a similar vibe. When you’re talking with other girls about girlhood it does give you the feeling of, like, well, this is great, but I wish we were all watching Riverdale right now or something.

SHERBERT: Yeah, and stimming.

POLLOK: Exactly. I wish we were watching Riverdale and stimming together. What brought you to fashion as a lens to examine culture?

SHERBERT: Well, first of all, I went to fashion school [FIT], and they have a great fashion museum and great fashion academia, which is kind of a cloistered field, but less so as people become more interested in studying fashion, like, the popularity of the Met Gala is related to the Costume Institute. But I always loved fashion on a personal level, when I was younger I wanted to open up a vintage store, you know, that. I wanted to name it after a lyric from a White Stripes song. It was just easy for me to see the meaning in clothes and it came naturally to me to be obsessed with it, from textiles – how different motifs have evolved in different textiles – to e-girls and things like that. When I graduated I wasn’t on a specific path, I didn’t have, like, a job where I was, like, “This is the first day of the rest of my life!” So I just started Markfisherquotes as a way to document historical garments in fashion museumes and it kind of expanded over time into more schizzy thoughts I was having about fashion and people just started interacting with it more and more. It just became my main account over time because I’m not naturally someone who wants to post a lot of personal stuff online.

POLLOK: I feel like writing and fashion have something in common in that they both really juxtapose the high and low. Like, not everyone reads Proust but everyone talks every day. Similarly, not everyone is really into fashion but we all have to wear clothes – it’s something we have over, you know, painters or sculptors or people who work in mediums that are less closely associated with everyday materials and behaviors.

SHERBERT: Yeah, well, fashion is so ubiquitous, I mean, everyone gets dressed every day. I think that we live in a hyper-visual world, like, we look at a billion pictures of content a day, and a lot of it is really dependent on clothes, and the content isn’t dependent on just the outfit, it’s based on your outward appearance, that’s just always been the game of influence. Clothes have lost some of their meaning in terms of, like, class associations and things like that that used to exist, but at the same time as culture has fractured and social media has accelerated that progress, clothes have taken on more meaning. Because everyone now has hyper-niche taste and a really personal interest in their aesthetic. Speaking to girlblogging and dissociative feminism, there’s things like grunge fairycore, there’s these very specific aesthetics.

POLLOK: Is there a look you want to take a stand for? Is there something we need to destigmatize?

SHERBERT: Oh, actually, I would. I love trotting around the great city of London in my Nike shorts and Hokas, which are, like, annoying running shoes. And we should destigmatize that. This isn’t something that needs to be destigmatized but lately I’ve really been into wearing tights in an athletic sense, like, in a Jane Fonda-esque way, which isn’t really common outside of dance anymore.

POLLOK: What would you say about dressing basic, divorced from any specific aesthetic?

SHERBERT: I think it’s really about not caring if people think you’re basic. I think we’ve all had moments where we’re getting dressed for a party and you feel like, “oh, I don’t look like this enough or I don’t look like that enough,” even if it’s an unconscious or fleeting thought. It’s about ease of mind. For example, Balenciaga sneakers and Salomons aren’t that different to the untrained eye, but, if you’re someone who has an eye for this type of thing one of them is more trendy now and one of them’s completely out of style – it’s about liberation from that thinking, that cycle.

POLLOK: What do you think the basic girl's politics are?

SHERBERT: That’s a really interesting question. With Nymphet Alumni, we recently did an episode on Christian Girl Autumn and people gravitating towards more traditional, conservative aesthetics. Like, in a visual sense, not a political sense. And someone read, like, really deep into it and started calling us a bunch of reactionaries. But it is kind of revolutionary to just be, like, “Actually, we were talking about pumpkin spice lattes.”

POLLOK: On the most recent episode of Nymphet Alumni you **mentioned a Harmony Korine quote that I thought was interesting about America’s obsession with images: “America’s all about recycling, I want to see all these kids wearing Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.” And you talked about how we relate to each other through tribal images.

We live in a snatchified culture, everything's right angles and Bella Hadid. But not everything has to be consumed. Sometimes it's enough to just watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer alone in your room and chill.

SHERBERT: That was actually me that said that, yeah. I would say that America feels fleeting and interchangeable a lot, I guess, but I love being an American. Like, that’ll never fleet or change for me. I think living in a different country now, like, I lean into being American more because I think a lot of people expect Americans to hate America ****and have this attitude of, like, “thank God I got out of there and I have health care now,” which is definitely true, but I’m not gonna go down like that, that’s lame.

POLLOK: What do you feel about how Americans relate to imagery? Do you feel like we have a special fetish for symbolism that other people don’t have or that’s just a universally human thing?

SHERBERT: I feel like my podcast co-host Sam would have an amazing answer for this one because she’s a huge disciple of Marshall McLuhan. But, I think - in terms of recent context, the American analysis of images has gotten out of control. People analyzing Met Gala outfits, just, billions of people doing that. I’m on an American side of the algorithm, but I’m sure people are doing it everywhere. But it does feel very American to me, the shift towards everyone being a cultural critic and analyst. Do you think that’s an American thing, the shift towards analyzing everything- which I’m obviously a part of- like, people being like, let’s break down the outfits on the last Euphoria, things like that.

POLLOK: I do think it’s very American of us, that’s sort of our current mode of cultural production. I was talking to my friend recently beacuse another friend of ours started a podcast dedicated to Real Housewives and it made me obsessed with how we’re so obsessed with our own media that our media is just about our own media. And the shift away from stories that embody tropes to stories about stories.

SHERBERT: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I briefly dipped my toes into Bachelor nation.

POLLOK: Oh, I love Bachelor nation, I’m in Bachelor nation.

SHERBERT: Yeah, it’s nice to watch with someone else and someone you can talk about it with, because it’s definitely something that just exists so you can talk about it. For example, right now I’m watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I just watch it by myself and don’t talk to anyone about it, really. But if I was watching The Bachelor alone and never spoke a word to anyone that would be, like, I have a chunk of my brain missing. I mean, Buffy reminds me of The Secret History because it’s just so pregnant with mysticism, I mean, I can’t even use the word esoteric anymore because it’s so pregnant with meaning with girlblogging. I mean, there are so many zoom ins on the men’s faces when the women are opening up, like, “I was gang raped,” or, like, “My uncle died last year,” and I was wondering, like, do you think they give them empathy face training? Because if I was listening to this many people talk about their stories who I didn’t really know that well, you know, I’d be like, blank expression. I mean it’s sad, but I would. There has to be an extent to which that sadness is performed.

POLLOK: Actually, my mom works in reality TV, and I’ve been exposed to that over and over my whole life – she’s a story producer – and it’s all fake. The faces that they make in those cuts aren’t even in the moment. They literally just have them sit there and go “make a happy face,” “make a sad face,” “make a shocked face,” and then they piece the story together using that.

SHERBERT: Wow, so your mom is literally Miss American Images. That’s a really cool job. Society still hasn’t figured out if reality TV is real or not, she might be the only person who knows.

POLLOK: Do you feel like beauty is a virtue?

SHERBERT: Hm, that’s interesting. I think it is. I’ve actually said that before on the podcast. But being hyperfixated with beauty is not virtuous, because, another thing that’s becoming more common in terms of American Images, TikTok just made a filter that gives you a way to color type yourself - the season of your face, like, autumn-winter-summer, and it leads you down the road to Kibbe body typing and looksmaxxing, and I think all of that is bad.

POLLOK: What's Kibbe body typing?

SHERBERT: It’s just this way of analyzing your body type and classifying it that’s very specific and analytical, it was created by this guy David Kibbe. I’ve never done it but I’m familiar, but it’s basically just that once you figure out your body type you can dress for your body type and, like, maximize your slay. And I think that level it’s just pure optimization, it’s a mathematical way of approaching the way you look, which I think can get a little too Patrick Bateman-y.

POLLOK: How do you approach how you dress yourself?

SHERBERT: On the podcast we always talk about the idea of “the low maintenance white girl,” who’s, like, a white girl who’s low maintenance, doesn’t wear makeup and all that. I think sometimes I veer into that category. My least favorite types of makeup are snatchified, once again. Which, we just live in a snatchified culture, everything’s getting more right angle-y, people are getting sharper and sharper jawlines, Bella Hadid, etc. So, yeah, I think you should just fuck around and find out. If you try out a new makeup look and you don’t like it, you know, you don’t have to put it on Tiktok. Not everything has to be consumed. Just watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and chill.

POLLOK: What have you been into dressing up and wearing lately? Any favorite designers?

SHERBERT: So, my number one thing I’ve been wearing recently is a pair of black Frye boots that my mom got me for some celebration a few years ago. They’re kind of like riding boots but I’ve manhandled them and made them soft, so I like to wear them pushed down and kind of slouchy. It looks so good, I think it looks so cool. I think people should take a gander at that. Well, you know that Zendaya dress that she wore that was molded to her body and made out of leather? And everyone was like, “wow, this looks crazy.” So, the way they do that is actually by wet molding leather to a mannequin of her body, and I basically did that to these boots just through exposure to the elements and sweat and now they’re very malleable. I also recently like wearing brown eyeliner. One thing I actually do like a lot, in terms of designers, I have this bag from Yves Saint Laurent, it’s called the Downtown bag, it’s giant - everyone’s kind of preferring giant bags right now, in the style of a city bag or something, or like with the Olsen twins and their giant beat-up Hermés bags back in the day. I just think this one is a great alternative to the Balenciaga City bag because I do feel like that’s the one everyone has. It’s funny they have almost the exact same name. Oh, and then I do have this Margiela cuff that I really like that my friend Kane gave me when we were both living in New Orleans. It’s the Balenciaga thing where it has white on the outside but it chips away into brass, and I like that a lot. And it says “go go” on it like some weird reference to Whiskey A Go Go, the famous bar. I’ve got a big bag and the money here is all coins, so, I’ve got, like, a large bag of coins on me at all times.

POLLOK: Is there anything you're reading right now?

SHERBERT: I definitely liked reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt, I thought it was really good. I became a little bit obsessed with Jack the Ripper when I moved to London and I’m reading this book called Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert, which is basically about this theory that this artist called Walter Sickert was actually Jack the Ripper. I wouldn’t say I particularly liked it, it was a bit hard to read. But, actually, I really think Anthony Bourdain is a really good writer and actually underrated as a writer, because obviously Kitchen Confidential sort of made his career, and people tend to think of him as a presenter and a personality and, like, a genius, but he’s actually just a really good writer. That was something I figured out this past year. I felt inspired. I read his second book and I really like how he wrote. I also think all books from master chefs are just good, like I read Gordon Ramsey’s book, too, and I liked it a lot. I don’t read that much, I like to keep my mind clean and I don’t think I would be the same writer as I am if I was reading a lot more.