Vice Style

Girls, next time you open a women's mag wouldn't you rather read stories about fancying bad boys and features that ask why boys are so weird, or have names like Man Mad: Confessions Of A Man Eater, rather than reading about some dim celeb's latest red carpet-diet-heartbreak? Most women's titles either seem to be aimed at schoolgirls, old grannies into baking and sewing, or supposedly intelligent women who actually have little space to think about anything other than clothes and famous people. So, seeing The Mushpit—a zine by our friends Roberta Brandes and Charlotte Roberts that attempts to be a girl's best friend for the sort of females who get more wasted than we do, wear $30 outfits, and in no way wish they were Tavi Gevinson or Angelina Jolie—is kinda refreshing.

---

VICE: Why a zine and not a blog?
Roberta Brandes: Blogging is like a one-night stand and we were both ready for a long-term relationship, or something. We want people to feel like they’re involved in something exciting and we also wanted to see our names in print—who doesn’t?

You've said you're trying to do a Just 21—Americans, Just 17 was a famous teen mag in the UK—why do we need another Just 21?
Well, it’s kind of about hitting the big two-one, but still feeling like an awkward teenager. Obviously, we’ve outgrown all the teen magazines we used to love, but we’re not quite ready for the world of grown-up ones like Grazia, Vogue, and, shudder, Red. I guess The Mushpit is a bit like the thongs in Tammy Girl—a horribly inappropriate halfway point between adolescence and adulthood. Those thongs were sized for 10-11-year-olds, but had things like Lick Me printed on them. As well as J17, we looked to magazines like Cheap Date, Mizz, Sugar, ooh, and Sassy.

But I thought the shops are full of magazines aimed at young women.
Well, actually, when you think about it, they aren’t really. There are fashion and art bi-annuals that look good on your coffee table, there are health and lifestyle magazines that want to give you arms like Madonna, and then there’s Grazia, which we all know is as mortifying as K-holing in public. We’re sick of being dictated to by some neurotic fashion editor and we think our lives are fine just the way they are. In fact, we think they’re hilarious. Nothing seemed to exist that was relevant to us and our friends, so we decided to make it ourselves. We wanted to make a guide to life that girls would actually find useful and funny. Instead of diet tips from Victoria’s Secret models, we’ve got sexual health clinic recommendations. Instead of $100 blow-dries we suggest $1 glitter hairspray. We think we represent a more realistic lifestyle than Vogue or Grazia would ever promote. We're angry at people like Grazia's style editor Paula Reid. Being expected to chase trends and seasons is just all so patronizing, no one we know thinks like that.

Why the overwhelmingly retro picture edit?
It’s really just pictures of girls who inspired us growing up. I guess it’s also embracing that whole nostalgic fanzine aesthetic.

Is Britney really a role model? Is it just a childhood adulation thing? Doesn't her flirtation with ephebophilia creep you out?
We’ve all grown up with Britney and I guess she’s kind of like that friend who’s had it all happen to her—the string of bad boyfriends, the Vegas wedding—it’s almost textbook. Sure, she’s not a role-model, but that doesn’t stop us loving her embroidered hipster jeans and slutty hair. The school uniform in "Hit Me Baby One More Time" probably wasn't her fault. And anyway, we've all been there—we were all slutty when we were 16.

Reading a thing about fancying guys that don't suck, sometimes literally, and aren't boring actors or idiot boy band members is kind of awesome. Why did you feel the need to correct that balance?
Because who actually wants to go to dinner with Jude Law? He’d probably be in the bathroom all night anyway. As much fun as it was snogging hot models when we were 18, we’re kind of over that by now. Plus, they’re usually terrible cooks.

Why, in magazines, are women—especially cool women—pretending, or meant to be pretending, that cock doesn't exist?
Well, it's a ridiculous situation. We do talk about guys sexually, we can hardly talk about finding someone to marry or having a crush.

Nearly all the references in The Mushpit are American, why's that?
I'm actually quite upset by this point, but you're right. It wasn't intentional. People like Ally and Buffy are strong female characters we’ve grown up with and we remember them for being sassy and well-dressed, not for being American. We also wanted to distance ourselves from the London It-Girl thing just because it’s a bit, well, lame.

Why do you have boys writing for you?
As much as we complain about boys, sometimes we stumble across one who totally gets us. The Mushpit isn’t meant to be exclusively for girls and we always have time for people we think are funny and clever.

Will it always be so relationship-heavy? 
Definitely not. All of the features in issue one stemmed from real conversations we had over the summer, so I guess we were just getting a bit hot and bothered about boys. Essentially, the contents of the magazine will always be: a) relatable, and b) hilarious. So hilarious. Like, beyond.

Who is your centerfold James Cox and why is he your centerfold?
I’m not sure, really. I bumped into 'Foxy Coxy' in a coffee shop and decided I wanted to spray him with oil and the whole centerfold idea just came in really handy. We’re going to have one in every issue so people can collect them and stick them on their walls. We have learned our lesson, though, we won't use someone just because they're hot again. That's not what we're about. From now on we'll be using friends. Even our centerfolds have to have something to say.

Does that sort of editorial policy apply across the board?
Well, we really like girls who are nice to each other—really funny girls who do stuff our friends would like to read about, though we never ever want to be earnest. We do give out useful information, in this issue we ran a piece titled Lies You Tell Your Friends, in the next it's Lies You Tell The Sex Clinic. We already included the sex clinic in our top-ten favorite places on Kingsland Road, that's how we do earnest.

Can you explain your That Guy piece. So there's this boring guy you always fancy and...
The problem is these boring guys we've all been with. When they break up with you you’re all, “Where did that six months of my life go?" These guys are like a plague. We all know one, we’ve all dated one, and we think it’s high time they back the fuck off. They think they're really cool, but they do a lot of moaning and have no sense of humor.

OK. Here's the cheeky question, do you like any new stuff?
We love new London fashion stuff like Meadham Kirchhoff, Nasir Mazhar, and Ashish. We totally dig blogs like Girls Get Busy. Oh, and we’re completely obsessed with Meat Liquor on Welbeck St.

Oh, and what does mushpit mean?
I guess it means vagina.

 

DARYOUSH HAJ-NAJAFI

TAGGED: Zine Creamers, The Mushpit