Deez Interviews: Amanda Mull on her career path + what fascinates her most about covering consumerism
Happy Friday, Deezers! Today’s interview is with The Atlantic’s staff writer Amanda Mull, who covers everything from plague dread (finally! A word for it!) to work/life balance killers to the Goop industrial complex. We talked about her latest column, It’s All So Premiocre, plus why the ~ ugh late capitalism ~ framing is a little overdone + more! Enjoy!
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I'm so curious about the path your career took that has led to The Atlantic, and specifically with your Material World column.
I've definitely taken an odd route to where I am now, especially for legacy media. I worked at PurseBlog, which is a small, niche fashion industry site for 10 years and had no real intention of leaving that job, but there were other things I wanted to write and I had sort of tenuous acquaintance relationships with a few editors, mostly via Twitter, so I got curious about doing some writing on top of my job.
Jason Diamond, who was the sports editor at Rolling Stone at the time, saw me tweeting about college football one day and bounced an idea for a story (about dog mascots) off me and asked if I'd like to give it a shot. I did, and some people read it, and having that one byline helped me convince other people that assigning me things might not be too terrible of a risk. Ten years writing for a really knowledgeable audience about a really narrow topic is as good a training as anyone probably gets anymore to generate story ideas and file accurate, clean copy that's an enjoyable read, even if that topic is luxury handbags, so editors usually kept letting me write stories after the first one, which was important.
I did that for like two or three years, on whatever I was interested in and people would let me write about, on nights and weekends. Eventually, I did a couple pieces back to back for Racked (RIP) — one about body positivity, the other about corporate feminism — that a lot of people read, and that's when my current editor at The Atlantic emailed me to see if I'd be interested in interviewing for an open spot they had on the health desk.
At first I was like...no, I'm not a health writer, I don't want to be a health writer. But I took the call, and it was clear he was really familiar with my work and wanted to position the job to play to my strengths on subject matter, so it seemed like a risk worth taking. Also, freelancing on top of a regular job was killing me by that point, and something needed to give.
The column was not my idea. The Atlantic was in the midst of redesigning our print magazine, which at the time had fairly few regular columnists and features. They wanted to change that, and also to add some stuff that wasn't so heavy on politics, international affairs, and things that are more traditionally thought of as "serious" topics, but that could benefit from a critical lens. They floated the idea, and, like, of course I agreed. Who even gets to be a magazine columnist anymore?
In a time of late capitalism, it seems like the "this object/brand/company has fraught implications" narrative can be found with almost everything in the economy. How do you decide what to focus on every week?
I think the "late capitalism" framing is pretty tired, from a narrative and critical perspective. I don't think anyone reading my columns would disagree that the place we've gotten ourselves to is bad, or that the economic and class structure of American society is ultimately responsible for a lot of that.
I only want to write about stuff that seems to be having a real influence on how people think about themselves or their lives or what they eat or how they spend their time or money. That's why Glossier isn't of particular interest to me — people have been buying overpriced tinted moisturizer and questionably effective serums since at least when I was in high school, and I'm 34.
Direct-to-consumer brands as a category are interesting, because of how they mark a generational shift in how people expect to be talked to by companies and how they figure out which ones they trust. People get far too excited about the potential for any specific product line to illuminate something interesting or unsaid about modern life.
I'd rather try to figure out why something becomes popular at a particular time — how are people thinking and feeling that made it click. That's often not a grand story about capitalism. Sometimes people just got bored of the thing they had before. But that says something about how attention works and what motivates it, which I think is interesting.
When I read your piece, "It's all so premiocre," my first thought was that this felt like such a specific, perfect way to describe a reality of millennial life — in lieu of "real" wealth or economic security, this generation turns to aesthetic knockoffs to make our lives seem good. Do you think the "premiocre" trend will carry into Gen Z lifestyles, or do you think there will be a backlash against it soon?
I'm going to be totally honest with you: I wrote the piece before coronavirus was anything but a localized mystery illness, and I no longer have strong beliefs about what will happen in the future. The best prediction I could give you is that probably a lot of the companies that make these goods will not survive, so things will probably be different.
How has writing about consumerism changed your own perspective as a consumer? Like, do you feel pressure to buy things in a certain way because people might see it as a tacit endorsement?
I love to shop. I always have. Nowhere do I feel more at peace than wandering around a profoundly mediocre suburban mall. Writing about luxury goods for ten years is a great way to figure out the motivations that underlie a lot of consumerism, and how people think about their identity through their disposable income.
It's also instructive of how effective marketing can be, and which insecurities and desires and fantasies it plays on best. Being cognizant of that doesn't necessarily free you from feeling it in the moment when you're trying to decide whether or not you should buy something. I've never considered how readers or the internet might react to it, though. It hadn't occurred to me that they'd care. There's a lot of stuff going on, no one could possibly care about the minutiae of my life that much.
Finally, I'm curious about the kinds of responses you get, especially when it comes to classifying the types of airport behavior, for example, or explaining the face mask trend.
I've always wondered if people feel more so comforted by the fact that they aren't alone in their behavior, or if there's pushback because people are uneasy thinking about how their behavior/consumer decisions are influenced by factors waaay out of their control.
People love to read things that reflect their experiences, or put words to something they've experienced but hadn't yet tried to articulate. I think people find it comforting to be reminded that they are not personally targeted by the systems that govern everyday life, but that a lot of people are dealing with similar sets of incentives and problems and resources that don't fit together neatly.
Sometimes people don't like accurate descriptions of their behavior, but a lot of the stuff I write about is relatively low stakes, as far as someone feeling insulted when I point out that, for example, they bought themselves a KitchenAid mixer at 32 years old as a status marker, or that they're chronically late to the airport because of how they manage anxiety. I think people feel comforted by being called on their low-stakes bullshit.
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Don’t forget to follow @amandamull on Twitter, and take care of yourselves this weekend!
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