By now, the fashion set has come to know and love Tavi Gevinson, editorial wunkderkind that leapt onto the fashion blogging scene in 2008 with The Style Rookie, her personal blog offering insightful views on fashion and fantastic #OOTDs that looked like a stylist put them together. Gevinson is way beyond her Style Rookie days, since solidifying herself as an old pro, launching Rookie, a lifestyle site for teenage girls. Today, Gevinson turns 18, making her a real-life adult on paper. But as the adage goes, age ain’t nothin’ but a number, and though she’s reached this milestone age, we think that Gevinson’s been a grown up way before the clock struck midnight on Monday.
Let’s be real: Tavi Gevinson is more mature than plenty of people twice her age who have been calling themselves “adults” since she was learning how to tie her shoes. The editrix has an old soul, and has dropped so much knowledge and common sense on us over the years, we thought it appropriate to pay tribute, on her 18th birthday, to the most level-headed teenager around.
These 8 quotes from Tavi that prove she’s been grown long before she could vote:
“I look back at some of the things that I wore and I don’t really like them now but I like that I wore them and I think it’s kind of cool that a bunch of adults, you know, appreciate it that a young person was actually trying to make a really bleak day in middle school more interesting.”
[Racked]
“The best cure for procrastination is to have so much on your plate that procrastination is no longer an option.”
“When I started Rookie, there were a lot of girls like me who had fashion blogs and loved getting dressed up and thinking about appearance, not in a stressful women’s magazine way, but in a creative way. I can understand how some feminists who’ve fought against things like style or beauty defining all women might feel confused about how we can discuss self-esteem and being your own person, but also write so much about fashion. But for Rookie, fashion is about personal expression and creativity. And I want there to be a place where women can do that, where you can care about fashion, and even be super girly, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not also smart or confident or strong.”
“There’s danger in glorifying negative emotions as fuel for art.”
“I wanted to start a website for teenaged girls that was not kind of this one-dimensional strong character empowerment thing, because one thing that can be very alienating about a misconception of feminism in that girls then think that to be feminists, they have to live up to being perfectly consistent in their beliefs, never being insecure, never having doubts, having all the answers…and this is not true and actually, recognizing all the contradictions I was feeling became easier once I realized that feminism was not a rule book but a discussion, a conversation, a process.”
[TED.com]
“People expect women to be that easy to understand, and women are mad at themselves for not being that simple. When in actuality, women ARE complicated. Women are multifaceted. Not because women are crazy. But because people are crazy, and women happen to be people.”
[TED.com]
“One is that feminism is for smart girls, and fashion is supposedly for stupid girls. I mean, I remember when I was writing [both] about fashion and occasionally about feminism, it was like [annoyed voice] ‘Won’t she just give up this fashion crap and be smart already?’ I just remember feeling, ‘What, the only people who write about fashion should be stupid?’ So there’s that, that they both have these different raps. And then because fashion is always about appearance, the industry is deeply flawed, and something that dictates how a woman should look and what her body should be like doesn’t’t seem feminist. And it’s not. But a lot of fashion isn’t like that.”
“I think you have to take the approach that feminism is ultimately about freedom.”
