*Full episode on Patreon*

Happy end of Summer! In this month’s letter, I offer my observations on the only cultural conversations that have captured my attention in 2025: 

1. New New Spirituality & Overall Metaphysical Vibes: Astrology’s mounting cultural importance, the craze around this year’s 8/8 portal, wavy ranch-y fashion, psychedelics, the non-toxic movement, push toward natural fibers, etc. 

2. The Politicization of Fitness: The growing interest in fitness is accompanied by a certain strain of panic about the “dark side” of a cultural value around health, fitness, and the body. Plus, the binary of Body as Machine vs. Body as Garden and how you can tune inward to sensation before exploding outward from neuroses…

3. The Mythos of the Modern Conservative Women: I’ve been fascinated by the media’s obsession with “defining” and “understanding” the modern conservative woman. What’s going on here?

Then, I give an update on my capital-h Healing Summer and invite you into a fall of spaciousness, routine, and uber clarity… 

Links:

• Gabi (sigh swoon) on 8/8 portal

• STARGIRL Ep. 39 where I predicted this metaphysical folkloric return

• “Pop’s Prosperity Gospel: How Addison Rae Ushered In a New Spiritual Style” Biz Sherbert in AnOther Mag

• “Zen and the Art of Being Jennifer Aniston” Julie Miller in Vanity Fair 

• “2024 was the year of the Chad” Angelica Frey interviewed me about physique posting for Fast Company 

• “Is Pilates Political?” Calum Marsh in the New York Times 

• “Getting Fit is Great — But It Could Turn You Into a RightWing Jerk” Zoe Williams in The Guardian

• “Can President Trump Run a Mile?” Zach Helfand on the return of the Presidential Fitness Test in the New Yorker

• “Demin, Dating, and Conservativism: Inside a ‘Make America Hot Again’ Party” Mandy Taheri in Newsweek

• Sydney Sweeney for Bai Coconut Water… why

This week we’re joined by Kaila Yu, author of the new book Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty.

Kaila tells her story: from growing up in Southern California idolizing pinup models to working in the import car scene to appearing in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and touring internationally with the girl band Nylon Pink. 

We discuss the concept of the Asian fetish as it exists in pornified mass media vs. real-world relationships, its roots in American military occupation, and the genesis of the ABG trope, influence of Stargirl Sung Hi Lee, Sam Rockwell’s monologue from White Lotus, and more. Kaila also shares her ultimate dissatisfaction with performing an object of desire, how she got sober, and how she’s re-inhabited her body after decades of alienation from it. 
Big thank you to Kaila for all that you shared <3 Buy Fetishized at your local bookseller and follow Kaila on Instagram and TikTok!

Welcome to the first installment of my newest episode type, Client Testimonials, where you hear directly from my incredible personal training clients about their experience working with me as a coach.

This week we hear from Miss Meghan, a true dream client based in Austin, TX. Meghan shares her full glow-up story: moving beyond her lifelong junk food habit, getting out of chronic pain, losing weight and lowering her blood glucose levels, building comfortability in the gym, feeling better naked and in her clothes, all while consistently building strength. 

We also discuss the perspective shifts inherent to a devotional gym routine: We debunk the idea of “fitness culture” as a bland normie influencer zone (it’s actually an earnest and sensual freakshow), explore how it feels to anchor yourself to a new definition of glamour more rooted in health, and discuss the agency and liberation that comes from calorie awareness (no, learning what you’re putting in your body doesn’t have to be a neurotic, restrictive, isolated hellscape). 

Thank you to Meghan for your time and all that you shared <3

***Announcement:***

Interested in personal training with me? I am currently running a Back-to-School promotion — my first ever — for early access on Fall 2025 spots. Here’s the 4-1-1:

• Receive 15% off any package when you sign by September 1st

• Limited spots available for a September or October 2025 start date

• This means you could save up to $300

  
  

  If you're interested, book a consult call with me — we’ll discuss your goals, exercise/injury history, and my current offerings, and see if it’s a fit to work with each other. Hope to see you in the gym soon!

• Lena Dunham on Girls Rewatch podcast

• Blonde Margaret hamming it up

• Margaret’s infamous Kenzo World campaign

• “Lights! Camera! Margaret!” profile in i-D (2025)

• “Margaret Qualley is a Maverick in the Making” AnOther Mag (2022)

• W Mag photoshoot with Margaret and Mikey Madison (2020)

• Margaret Qualley Once Upon a Time in Hollywood TikTok edits

• “Crush” Rachel Antonoff SS14 campaign

• “Tiny Moves” Bleachers music video (2024)

*Full episode on Patreon! Join the STARGIRL Patreon for access to exclusive content <3 *

I often get asked how to "increase" or "find" your inner Stargirl. I don't think that's something you can engineer (we feel it when it's over-produced), but I do think there are concrete ways you can strengthen your sense of self by living more on-purpose.

In this month's letter, I reflect on the top 5 things I believe have improved my confidence and allowed me to live more freely: getting in shape, developing a conscious relationship to drugs & alcohol, taking pride in my most important relationships, tuning out the voices/discourse/hot-button issues that don't actually interest me, and finding my voice by using my voice.

As I always say, it's gonna get weirder before it gets less weird <3 Cheers to a lifetime of learning to trust yourself <3

Happy Addison Week! In this special episode we return to the original Stargirl Miss Addison Rae to review her debut album Addison, out last week. We talk audiovisual worldbuilding, heavy-handed references, her first real live performances, plus the attendant media rollout, Internet hysteria, and collective impulse to claim that we saw her first. We also circle back to the Artist vs. Muse debate, and I argue that her uniquely uncomplicated portrayal of her own sexuality has the power to heal internalized misogyny in 2025. We end on the question, “How does watching Addison make you feel?” and hear some responses from listeners from “little girls playing mermaids” to “embodied sensual force.” Hell yes!

*Subscribe to the STARGIRL Patreon for access to exclusive episodes and more!*

Discussed:

• STARGIRL episodes: Addison Rae Part I (May 2022), Addison Rae Part II (December 2024)

• Podcast interviews: Popcast, Zane Lowe

• Addison by Caroline Tomkins for the NYT

• Addison profile in ELLE

• Addison album reviews: Pitchfork, the New Yorker

  
  “Body Doubles and Aquadisease” Nymphet Alumni

Lauren Kanski is the founding coach on Ladder, a strength training app that offers progressive overload training in a variety of modalities. In the five years I’ve followed her on Instagram, Lauren has had a tremendous and direct influence on my life: from getting me curious about the kettlebell to connecting me with leading voices in the health and fitness industry to inspiring me to embark on a career in fitness myself. She is a real-life Stargirl and was born to lead. 

In this episode, we discuss Lauren’s unique path in the fitness industry (from pre-med to teaching yoga to grinding as an Equinox trainer to founding one of today’s leading fitness apps), her tough love attitude as a coach, why calorie awareness is vital to long-term weight management, and her journey with sobriety, her marriage, and her faith. Huge thank you to Lauren for this beautiful and heartfelt episode. <3 !
Follow Lauren on Instagram and join team Body and Bell on the Ladder app

This week we’re joined by internet sensations Amelia and Evan of Girls Rewatch podcast to discuss Lena Dunham, two years after we first knighted her as an original Stargirl. We discuss Lena’s work and life post-Girls (Sharp Stick, her new show Too Much, and her marriage, chronic illness, and perma-hibernation mode) and assess the past 10 years of self-conscious scripted comedy (White Lotus, Broad City, Fleabag, Sex Lives of College Girls, Severance, Insecure, And Just Like That, etc.). We also analyze Gen Z’s reclamation of Marnie and reminisce about the Dream of mid-2010s creative Brooklyn advanced by the best TV show of all time. 

Listen to / watch / follow Girls Rewatch podcast, and follow Amelia and Evan <3

Links:

• STARGIRL Episode 12: Lena Dunham Part I (2022)

• Sharp Stick Lena’s movie from 2022

• Too Much, Lena’s forthcoming show
  “Lena Dunham’s Change of Pace” Rachel Syme in The New Yorker (2024)

This week we travel back in time 100 years (!) to meet Edna St. Vincent Millay, girl poet and emblem of 1920s Greenwich Village bohemia. We are joined by the writer (and my former professor) Kate Bolick, who wrote extensively about Millay in her 2015 book Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own. We discuss Edna’s passionate free spirit, her tragic end, and the self-renewing Dream of writerly collaboration in downtown New York. More importantly, we discuss the age old question of how to build a sustainable life as a woman artist — how to define “meaning” vs. “noise” for yourself, and how to live it out with poise.

Discussed:

• Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, Kate Bolick (2015)

• “All the Single Ladies” Kate Bolick in The Atlantic (2011)

• Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Nancy Milford (2002)

• “How Fame Fed on Edna St. Vincent Millay” Maggie Doherty in The New Yorker (2022)

• The Long Winded Lady (collection of essays by Maeve Brennan in The New Yorker)

*Full episode on Patreon*

This week we go long on the evolution of Julia, the woman behind the cult YouTube channel Itsblitzzz. We reflect on the many lives she’s lived in her 15+ years online: DIY T-shirt reconstruction guru, yatted nightlife star, Los Angeles ASMR artist royalty, full on mommy blogger, and more. We also explore her fans’ somewhat nihilistic but understandable grief over the fact that she no longer represents a scene kid cultural underbelly, the line between being a Cool Loner and plain agoraphobic, and what you lose / gain as you grow up and life gets smaller.