Lily Sperry is a writer and brand consultant. She runs the newsletter Health Gossip.
In this magical episode, we discuss the origins of her project, the larger esoteric fairy-girl moment we’re living through, and why creation is the ultimate antidote to ennui. Plus, Lily shares her definition of “health” as maintaining a “clear channel,” and we reflect on the benefits of not centering our days around consumption, why New York can feel hostile to femininity, and the connection between femininity and fertility. Thank you Lily for your wisdom and grace!
Links:
Checking in after a busy fall season... in this month's letter, I reflect on the current biggest sources of meaning in my life (work, creative partnership, my marriage, dance, and spirituality), voice my desire to be a formal student again, get nostalgic for the first time I encountered D'Angelo, and keep the good vibes going after the STARGIRL party last week. Sending love XOXO!
This week we welcome the writer Marisa Meltzer back to STARGIRL to discuss her new book It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin (out this week!). We discuss the myth of Jane Birkin and Marisa’s project to animate her beyond a 2D moodboard figure, and use Jane as a vessel to revisit classic STARGIRL conversations such as Artist vs. Muse, Narrative Control, and Nature vs. Artifice. We discuss Jane’s lifelong Lolita energy, character as a mother, natural aging process, and comfortability as a vessel for others’ creative and sexual projections.
Plus, I reflect on seeing Addison live after 5+ years of indulging my fixation in my imagination, give my take on the various Showgirl vibes in culture right now, and answer the elephant in the room: Is Jane Birkin a Stargirl or an It Girl?
Discussed:
It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin, Marisa Meltzer (2025)
Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Life of Emily Weiss’s Glossier, Marisa Meltzer (2023)
“Addison Rae Wants More Than Virality” Alex Hawgood, W Mag (2025)
Alix Earle on DWTS (so good!)
“Margaret Qualley Manifested This Cover Story” Willa Bennett Cosmopolitan (2025)
The Power Notebooks, Katie Roiphe (2020)
Occasioned by her recent return to Outdoor Voices, this week we go long on Ty Haney. We examine Ty’s original mission to separate exercise from performance (and how that was internalized as a “demand” to “play”), revisit the tired, left-of-basic criticism that fitness is classist, catch up on Ty’s various Futurist ventures in her time away from OV, and analyze OV’s attempt to stay relevant as sportswear fashion trends evolve. Plus, urgent conversations such as: Is Ty’s Web3 Cowgirl vibe landing? Does fangirling over Elon Musk in 2025 need to *mean anything*? Why is my cultural imagination surrounding Austin, TX circa 2016 so vivid?
Mentioned:
STARGIRL episode with Lauren Gerrie - a must-listen for the soul <3
“Ty Haney is Back at Outdoor Voices” Brooke LaMantia, The Cut (2025)
“Ty Haney Is Back at Outdoor Voices, this time with a new collection” Cara Salpini, Retail Dive (2025)
Ty on Pia’s Pod podcast (2025)
“Ourdoor Voices Founder Ty Haney Has Moved On. Mostly” Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz The Cut (2023)
“My Week with Ty Haney’s CBD for Workouts” (review of Joggy) Dominique Pariso, The Strategist (2023)
“Ty Haney is Elon Musk’s Reply Guy” @grandeillusion on Substack (2025)
“Casting Resilience: Entrepreneur Ty Haney’s Advice for Leaders? Go Fishing” Jessica Militare, Forbes (2025)
“The New Exercise Boom and the Woman Who Saw It Coming”, Suzy Weiss, The Free Press (2025)
“What Should We Call Athleisure Now?” Vanessa Friedman, NYT (2025)
Welcome Lauren Gerrie, a true downtown icon and "The Body Series" embodied ;) Lauren is the co-founder of MOVES dance class, a culinary artist (and formerly Marc Jacobs’ personal chef), a figure model, and so much more. Today she shares her wisdom: how dance helps us to re-inhabit sensuality and freedom, why being in tune with your cravings > following “food rules” and trends, why expensive convenience is not your best life, and the importance of rituals that elate and unify. Above all, Lauren is a joy seeker: living proof of all things vital and wild. <3
Follow Lauren on Instagram and learn more about her work
Subscribe to the STARGIRL Patreon
The scroll always stops for Miss Victoria Paris! In this Feel Good episode, we explore Victoria Paris’ explosion onto the cultural consciousness and how she became the playbook of how to blow up on TikTok. We reminisce about her early content (inventive workout GRWMs, death by Stairmaster, Suede Brooks, her obsession with her “low ass,” etc.), trace her style and lifestyle evolution, examine the backlash over her spending, weight loss, and 24/7 approach to streaming, and fawn over her cute ass girlfriend Nico <3 Plus: the expectations of NYC vs. LA influencers, why Sabrina Carpenter is not a Stargirl, and why I legitimately get depressed every time a creator I adore leaves New York… LOVE YOU VP thanks for always keeping the Glint alive <333
Book a free consult call to learn more about personal training with me & join the waitlist!
“Sabrina Carpenter Is Glad You Like Her Sexual Content” Mel Ottenberg in Interview
“Victoria Paris Wants to Big Brother Her Life” Emily Sundberg (!!) in Interview (2021)
“Chasing Boys with TikTok Princess Victoria Paris” Brock Colyar in The Cut (2021)
“It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl” Brock Colyar in The Cut (2025)
Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York (2021)
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:
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.
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…
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:
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
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!
This week we tackle ingénue Margaret Qualley with the help of my friend and the writer/trend forecaster Holly Friend. We analyze Margaret’s recent re-introduction as an explicit sex object (The Substance, her Bond Girl potential, etc.), and the many intertwined celebrity dramas that make up her myth. We explore her ugly duckling origin story, insistence on her own girlishness, luminous elven beauty, infamous lip bite, and career ambitions, and dive into the Dream/Threat latent in her marriage and creative partnership with Jack Antonoff.
Subscribe to Holly’s new Substack Recurring Character and follow her on IG!
Discussed:
*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)
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:
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)
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.
Welcome back to the next episode of The Body Series, where we go deep on all the best STARGIRL themes: embodiment, warring conceptions of “health” and “fitness,” and what a “mind-body connection” looks like in practice.
Today we’re blessed by Sasha Hanway, a coach on the Ladder app and a certified personal trainer, yoga teacher, breathwork and meditation coach, and holistic nutrition coach.
We go Back to Basics mode: the importance of building and maintaining muscle as you age, why progressive overload is the most effective way to train, why people tend to overcomplicate nutrition, and how all of this plays a role in the current metabolic crisis we face in the United States.
Sasha also shares her experience navigating social media as a fitness influencer, her duty to share reputable studies and research, and how to find trusted voices in the sea of online fitness content.
As a former college athlete, Sasha has always loved movement, but it was progressive overload strength approach combined with deep core work that truly transformed her body. She’s on a mission to help women shift their mindsets to take up space and be bold: to nourish themselves and fall in love with their bodies and movement. Her program ALIGN, found on the Ladder app, blends mindfulness, strength, yoga, mobility and deep core work, and has helped thousands of women transform their bodies and their relationship with exercise. Sasha is also a recreational runner, surfer and lives in the PNW with her husband, stepson, and rescue cat Baby Ru.
Follow Sasha on IG and work out with her on Ladder!
Links:
“Fitness startup Ladder comes for Peloton for allegedly copying their app” Sarah Perez, TechCrunch (2024)
Other voices I love on these topics: Lauren Kanski, Kelly LeVeque, Dr. Peter Attia, Dr. Casey Means, @GlucoseGoddess, @feelwellbyanna
Book a free personal training consult call with Emma! (Note: I am not currently accepting new clients, but feel free to get in touch and I’ll add you to the waitlist!)
This week we delve into the relentless and perverted mind of Catherine Breillat, the French filmmaker and novelist who has disturbed audiences for 50 years. Broadly consideredcinéma du corps,Catherine’s movies explore the grotesqueness of sex and the body, depraved sexual longing, petulant, manipulative, and erratic women, and fraught and often violent sexual encounters.
In this episode, we explore Breillat’s ability to craft characters we can’t stand, invert the expected power dynamics between men and women, and engender such a visceral response from her audience. We also review her many capital-c Controversies and discuss how her insistence on women’s manipulative tendencies works so well in art and… less well in real life.
Plus! More on Ripe / Dead psychology, a rant on Margaret Qualley from Holly, and a rave on Eileen Kelly / @killerandasweetthang from Linnea Grace.
Mentioned:
CRUSH Rachel Antonoff SS 2014 short (Margaret Qualley prototype foreshadowing…)
Movies by Catherine Breillat:A Real Young Girl(1976),36 Fillette(1988),Romance(1999),Fat Girl(2001),Sleeping Beauty(2011),Abuse of Weakness(2013),Last Summer(2024)
“Catherine Breillat’s Unselling Cinema of Desire” Victoria Uren (2025)
Catherine Breillat’s response to allegations of sexual misconduct
“State of Grace: Catherine Breillat on Last Summer” interview with Grace Byron inScreen Slate(2024)
This week we go back to basics and investigate what one of the world’s hottest young women has to teach us about our own self hate (!). We revisit the classic STARGIRL paradigm of Ripe vs. Dead and examine the latent Threat of Dead beauty, and traverse Lily-Rose’s metaphorical potential as a descendant of Hollywood Royalty, ready and willing sex object, and generational leader in her own right.
We also revisit our conversation about the simultaneous crumbling of and longing for trusted institutions via a few current events: the LA fires and David Lynch’s passing, the TikTok ban fakeout, and President Trump’s inauguration.
Plus! A Rave on classic and beloved Stargirl Sky Ferreira, from Helen <3
Discussed:
“Extremely Overanalyzing Hollywood’s Nepo Baby Boom” New York Magazine (2022)
Lily-Rose Depp provided pale skin brown nipple representation on screen discourse
The Power Notebooks, Katie Roiphe (2020)
Today we travel back in time to the early 2010s and delve into the moody, mysterious soundscape of Kelela, the singer and dance music producer who soundtracked my early twenties. We explore her evolution from Muse to a handful of forward-thinking, UK-based producers to an Artist in her own right, why she stands above the scores of more famous Alt R&B artists (FKA Twigs, Solange, SZA, Tinashe, etc.), and the ways she’s employed more Narrative Control in recent years by explicitly defining her audience and who she will and won’t work with. We also check in on the Club — the rules of it, who it is and isn’t “for," and whether or not it's meaningfully alienating... anyone in 2025.
PLUS! This episode features exclusive voice notes from my husband, weirdo music nerd, and former club kid, David <3
Mentioned:
Kelela interview with Tanya Bunter (2023)
Raven review/profile in NYT (2023)
Interview in Dazed(2022)
