Group Chat With the Besties: An Interview With @Vanilla_Swag
A few weeks ago, an image popped up on my Instagram discover page of a blonde head staring out at the ocean. It was an ocean-spray filtered photo accompanied by comic sans-esque fuchsia text reading, “I am the CEO of Wallmart.” It was perfectly random and perfectly aquamarine.
@Vanilla_Swag is the account of Sonya Nesterova, a 20-year-old Russian artist and student who collects the sort of grainy, digital camera photos that used to appear on Myspace profiles and early Tumblr accounts. Fried-straight hair, messy buns and peace signs, Paris Hilton (of course), and lots of “I’m sweet but psycho” sentiments. The pithy sayings she layers over images are saccharine and sometimes unhinged, a funny riff on emotional internet declarations letting other people know how we feel on a Thursday night. “Strangers think I’m quiet, my friends think I’m crazy, my besties know I’m insane!” for instance. Or maybe a Kafka quote — “I am free and that is why I am lost” — over an image of two girls showing off their SpongeBob and Patrick T-shirts.
Sonya is an archivist of these early-mid 2000s photos, saving thousands of them to her phone. “They are so raw, and they are so honest in a way,” she explains. Her collection inspires paintings of “girls with blonde hair and Starbucks cups and crop tops” along with suburban living room sayings like “Live, Laugh, Love.” Very Famous talked to Sonya about a love of basicness, Russian celebrity Nastya Shevchenko, and what the vanilla lifestyle looks like. Before we do, here’s a recent caption from @Vanilla_Swag to create an ambiance:
𝙸’𝚖 𝚘𝚗 𝚊 𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚍𝚒𝚎𝚝 🍣🤷🏻♀️
𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚍👀
𝙸 𝚎𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚝.
𝙷𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚢 𝚐𝚒𝚛𝚕𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎
𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚜𝚝 😌💜💞
What’s the story of Vanilla Swag? What inspired you to start creating these sorts of images?
Nostalgia, a lot of nostalgia. The internet itself is my biggest inspiration, of course Tumblr, Myspace. I wanted to recreate the feeling, make it a trend again, stupid pictures with stupid quotes. It’s kind of silly. It’s ironic, but it’s also serious at the same time.
Tell me more about that. Do you feel certain aspects of Vanilla Swag are conveying more serious messages?
No, honestly, it’s all just fun and games. It’s all just fun. It’s supposed to be entertaining and make people think about life ten years ago when they were teenagers and walking around suburban areas and just buying Starbucks and wearing stupid crop tops. Just having fun, you know?
I think the point of this account is just entertaining, of course. I can’t say that it’s high art or there is a concept behind the user. I wanted to recreate the pictures that people were posting ten years ago on Myspace. I just wanted to see how people would react to these types of pictures.
There’s a raw quality to photos from that time that’s fascinating.
Some things I write are so ridiculous like, “I just want to drink my latte and go to the mall.” My favorite post I made, it’s something I found online, it makes absolutely no sense. It’s just like some gibberish words from Snapchat: “how much could a white girl can’t if a white girl truly couldn’t even.”
That’s a good one! Like you said, it’s just such a silly thing. What you were saying about it being for fun and entertainment, I think that’s one of the best reasons to do something right now.
I’m scrolling through my account and, actually, my first picture says, “No amount of time will make me doubt my feelings about you.” First, I wanted to make this account about emo love or something like emo relationships. Emo was a big subculture in America and Russia. A lot of this was also inspired by a Russian app that’s called VKontakte. Have you heard about it?
No, I haven’t!
It’s like Facebook, like Russian Facebook I guess. There’s this Russian girl I follow on VKontakte, and she’s so iconic. She’s such a big inspiration for me because she was the girl that really brought the culture from the USA to Russia. She started bleaching her hair and wearing really long nails and crop tops and piercings and bright makeup.
Is she a celebrity in Russia?
She was, but she totally changed her style. She’s really basic right now, I could say. I mean, personally, I’m a fan of basic, and “vanilla swag” actually means basic swag.
There’s something inspirational about examining basicness.
Right now, there’s a big trend with Y2K style, early-2000s style, and I feel like I’m more inspired by the culture that came around 2010-2012 because this is the time when I was a teenager. I have thousands of these pictures saved on my phone. I just collect them I guess, I don’t know why.
I get it, there’s something very captivating about them. I think images now are so curated and can easily look so polished, and I think these early-mid 2000s images, you know, they’re a little more gritty, a little more pixelated.
They are so raw, and they are so honest in a way. With my account, I guess I just want to take care of the pictures that I love. I don’t want them to disappear.
I like that idea, it’s a way of saving them.
Yeah, I don’t want these great, silly pictures to disappear.
There’s a lot of recent cultural history, in a sense, in them. It’s from a past not too long ago, but long ago enough to where it feels like a different world.
It’s true. I mean these pictures are from like around 2010, but it feels like it was like 20 years ago.
You were mentioning vanilla meaning basic, and I noticed you use vanilla in your posts to describe a kind of lifestyle. Asking followers what “vanilla things” they did today, things like that. What does it mean to you to be vanilla?
Mostly I love talking to my fans. I love people who comment on my posts, and it’s so fun to see how people react and what they think about my account. Sometimes I get hated on, I don’t know why. They say it’s a rip-off or this is so weird and silly.
I think it’s people who don’t get it, they don’t have a sense of humor. I was going to ask what people’s reactions are, and it sounds like they’re all over the place.
Yeah, and I like horses. I’m a horse girl, I grew up riding horses and being out in nature, and maybe soon I’ll create a new account that will be just totally about horse girls.
PLEASE do! I would love that so much.
I’ll write silly quotes like, “Holding a nose is sometimes better than holding a hand” and “When you’re riding horses, you’re that much closer to heaven.”
I tried to be a horse girl, but I didn’t have what it took to stick to my riding lessons. There is kind of an overlap between horse girls and girliness.
It is, it is. Right now, I’m just scrolling through my account, and I see the most popular posts are about crazy and about losing your mind. I don’t know why, but when I write “I’m losing my mind” or “I’m going crazy” people love these posts.
I was gonna ask, I really like that the images are a mix of statements like “You can’t spell awesome without ME” but also this mental health sort of stuff about “Me and my trauma are literally besties.” Do you think that seems to speak to people more?
I mean, yeah, honestly I struggle with these things sometimes. Being a teenager growing up with the internet, it was pretty intense. I feel when we’re teenagers, our feelings are just so much more powerful. Sometimes it feels like you’re going crazy, but sometimes if you make fun of it, it feels like it’s not that scary I guess.
Definitely, it brings it back down to earth a bit more — takes some of the heaviness out of it.
One of my favorite posts was “I came, I saw, I had anxiety, I left.” Making fun of everything is my favorite thing.
It keeps us going! It’s nice to be able to laugh about it. You’ve talked about Tumblr, Myspace, Nastya Shevchenko. Are those where you get your aesthetic inspiration from?
Absolutely. I would say Tumblr — I still have Tumblr — I’m not active on my Tumblr, but I log on often and look for pictures. My favorite thing is stalking old accounts, I don’t know why. I think it’s just so fascinating. Sometimes I feel so sorry I never had Myspace.
That was a fun time!
Did you have MySpace?
I did! I was probably 15 around the MySpace era? I did the whole Top 8, I had my profile song. I decorated it.
Whoa!
I wanted to ask, there are two specific images I really loved. One says “I’m the CEO of Wallmart” and the other’s “Me at 2am applying for a job at McDonald’s.” What inspired these corporate declarations?
Memes, I guess, and a lot of teenagers, they struggle to get money because you want to buy a new laptop or something cool. You don’t really need those things, but you want those things because of culture and you want to be cool. It’s so silly and funny that we… honestly, it’s just memes.
I think part of that girly-girl culture is a lot of Starbucks and shopping.
Yes, like “Are you depressed?” just go and buy some stuff. I don’t even want to be special, I don’t even want to be part of a subculture. I just want to be a basic girl living her dreams and not caring about anything. Caring about makeup and fashion.
I hear you, there’s a beauty in that. I think especially if you’re an artist and working a lot to put your own vision out in the world, there’s something very appealing about not having to try to be so special in that way. It’s nice to be interested in the things that everybody’s interested in, the things that get us through the day.
Yeah! Honestly, the things that get me through the day because I don’t have that many things to do, so I use my time just being online, surfing the web, and making these stupid pictures that actually don’t make sense but they’re funny anyways.
What are some of your favorite vanilla activities to do?
Here’s my bucket list: I really want to go to New York — this is my dream — and I really want to go and do my nails because I tried it once and it was really bad. I was thinking about bleaching my hair, but I’m really dark, so I think it would be kind of difficult. My vanilla activities, well, of course going to Starbucks, watching Netflix, the most important thing of course, having a group chat with your besties. Talking about boys, going shopping, eating vanilla ice cream, and just not doing that much I feel like.
You know, that’s true, that’s part of it in a way. Just chilling, hanging out.
Hanging out, being really laidback, not trying to be someone cool, just being myself I guess.
If Vanilla Swag were a character, a girl in a movie, who would she be?
Of course she would be Paris Hilton, and she would be Snookie and JWoww.
I love it!
I feel like I could represent Vanilla Swag. I could represent that girl, but when this style was around I was a child. I was like 12 years old, so I couldn’t really experience this to the fullest. I’ve never been apart of it, but I can have an idea of how it was.
You’re seeing it through new eyes!
I remember I wanted to be those girls. I wanted to have really long hair and I still do, and I wanted to go around in crop tops. Of course it was really inspiring to me to look up to this subculture.
Talking about the mental health stuff about anxiety and trauma, what drew you to talking about these topics?
Honestly, I see that mental health is a big thing right now. I go to a therapist myself. I feel like joking about it — it’s really funny to me. I feel like it’s always been a thing, talking about being crazy.
It’s a way of reclaiming it now.
Yeah. There’s this picture that says, “Yes, I’m crazy but I’m free.” Everyone has their own problems, and I struggle with anxiety myself. Talking about this in such a way where I can make fun of it, it really helps me a lot. I made a “daily self-care tips” post that says, “Look at fire, go to the mall, apply mascara, drink latte, listen to Ed Sheeran.”
Yes, I love that one! Those are great tips.
It’s hard to describe the feeling I get from @vanilla_swag. I just love making these pictures. It’s all about the nostalgia and being a teenager and trying to follow your dream and looking up to pop stars. There’s a lot of humor and love, and a lot of nostalgia and a lot of beauty to it.
All images by @vanilla_swag, of course! Here are Sonya’s paintings:
