A Room of Our Own: A Very Deep Dive Into Bedroom Culture with Rachel Moss
Bedrooms have always been sacred ground for girls; the one square footage where you got to decide who you were before anyone else weighed in. This week I'm talking to Rachel Moss, author of In the Girls' Room: Essays on Bedroom Culture from the 90s to Now, about the long, weird, footnote-worthy history of what girls actually do behind a closed door: making zines, starting bands, papering walls with posters of their heroes, filling notebooks with genuinely bad poetry. We go from the Riot Grrrl scene in 90s Olympia and Kathleen Hanna's outsized (and under-credited) cultural footprint, to the moral panic of Reviving Ophelia and the Cassie Bernall myth, to Tavi Gevinson and Rookie Mag, all the way up to "bed rotting" as bedroom culture's more depressed, more online cousin. It's a conversation about privacy, creativity, and what happens to a private space once the internet — and your own phone — starts listening in. Grab your zine scissors, we're getting into it.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:08 — Intro: what "bedroom culture" is, and welcoming Rachel Moss
02:28 — Rachel's zine shelf and the joy of meeting a fellow zine person
03:04 — Making zines in secret in rural Ohio, and the Courtney Love conspiracy zine detour
05:26 — Defining bedroom culture: making, consuming, and archiving
09:21 — Where it starts: the 1950s "invention" of the American teenager
10:40 — Riot Grrrl 101: Olympia, Kathleen Hanna, and Bikini Kill
14:18 — Sadie Benning's bedroom video diaries and the tangled Riot Grrrl web (Le Tigre, etc.)
17:26 — The dark side: Prozac Nation, Reviving Ophelia, and the Cassie Bernall myth
22:51 — Shared family computers, Net Chick, and the first wave of girls building websites
28:35 — Rookie Mag, Tavi Gevinson, and Petra Collins' uncredited influence
36:00 — Bed rotting, depression, and Qualeasha Wood's 2025 gallery performance
44:44 — Building Internet Bedroom, staying independent, and resisting the algorithm
53:32 — Where to find Rachel's book, Substack, and Instagram
TRANSCRIPT
Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19mENoNtmGvp4XVh_7MELEsh1laxpvIVMx-meN9-OaZk/edit?usp=sharing [https://docs.google.com/document/d/19mENoNtmGvp4XVh_7MELEsh1laxpvIVMx-meN9-OaZk/edit?usp=sharing]
Connect with Mary:
* Website: www.marymmahoney.com [http://www.marymmahoney.com]
* Instagram: @mimimahoney [https://www.instagram.com/mimimahoney/?hl=en]
* Email: MaryMargaret.Mahoney@gmail.com [MaryMargaret.Mahoney@gmail.com]
Connect with Rachel Moss:
* Order Rachel’s books here: https://www.internetbedroom777.com [https://www.internetbedroom777.com/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGnZTWu-CofGIC6byrBD4AxbEVWZ1BPXub-LGfHAINSl1Bgf5nu4ISjt-onOtg_aem_l101iO75BAasVCaVtKK1TQ]
* YouTube: Rachel Moss (@internetbedroom) [https://www.youtube.com/@InternetBedroom]
* Instagram: @girlgutters [https://www.instagram.com/girlgutters/]
* Substack: https://internetbedroom.substack.com [https://internetbedroom.substack.com]
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