There are a lot of distractions when you're in creative industries like publishing or fashion or media, and it's a real blessing to have witnessed some of those up close at a young age. I think when you get past the glamour, that's when you get to the good stuff - the stuff that really feeds your soul and enriches you as a person.
— Tavi Gevinson
I have a pair of Rodarte leggings. They're crazy, but I wore them for one day, and then by the end of the day they weren't tearing, but they were getting a little loose.
If I'm thrifting, and I find this great dress, but it won't fit me, and I won't grow into it because I'm impossibly tiny, I don't want to let it sit there. I'll buy it and send it to a friend.
I've worked with a few coaches, and I did theater camp when I was younger, and I think what was good was when I was younger, it was never intense Interlochen theater camp.
I've kept a journal since I was 15. And I feel like it's been crucial to who I've become and trying to maintain stuff, a sense of who I am just for myself and not for other people.
It was always in the back of my mind while we were working on the first year of 'Rookie' that we'd do a print version at some point.
I'd seen 'The Sopranos,' but I wasn't a faithful viewer because I can't handle it.
The idea that feeling confident and feeling misunderstood are mutually exclusive really bugs me. So a lot of what 'Rookie' is about is just showing that you can be both, and you can like whatever you want.
I think I surprise some people because a lot of the time, I roll out of bed and go to school, and it's like I don't wear anything that interesting sometimes.
The connection that readers have to 'Rookie' has only meant more and more to me as I get older.
I so think it's limiting to define an audience ahead of time. This is something I've brought on myself by being like, 'There are no 'real' teen publications! That's what I'll do!' But then it's like, well, if I want 'Rookie' to be successful and popular, then people will invalidate the realness by saying it's popular and mainstream.
Interviewing Rei Kawakubo in Tokyo and John Galliano in Paris, both for 'Pop' magazine, were huge for me, not just in learning about fashion and writing but about how little desire I had to be a critic/reporter/journalist/commentator so much as a kind of travel diarist.
What feels most productive to me isn't to think so much in terms of how I can be alternative, but how I can be subversive in a way that feels organic, how I can connect with people, and how I can just be myself, which may be the hardest thing to be.
I really like looking at what's new in my favourite designers' stores, even if I don't buy anything.
I created 'Rookie' because I read a lot of websites that I thought were cool and interesting, but they weren't for teens, and I wanted us to have something that could be ours.
A lot of people glorify and romanticize the idea of being an early bloomer: finding success very early and being a child star. But it can also be quite dangerous.
My life motto is basically to lower your standards and expectations so you're never disappointed and never put any trust in anything, and I try to prepare for the day that I wake up, and everyone I know is like, 'LOL JK best long-running practical joke ever', so I've never really let myself freak out or get too excited about anything.
I'm really thankful for every experience I've had, even the ones that were puzzling or disorienting, because they taught me so much.
Some of my clothes are things that we'd play dress up with when we were little, and it's funny that now I'm wearing it, like, as an everyday thing. But if I say 'vintage' or 'thrifted' on the blog, there's this community of fashion bloggers, and I've become sort of tight with some of them, and we, like, just send each other packages.
I really just don't think that teenagers and adults are maybe as different as people think, and so the best roles, to me, are treated like real people and not like these 'crazy kids we don't know what to do with.'
When I was younger, I always liked acting. You know, like, acting locally, or community theater at school. But it's not an especially insured career choice, so I was like, 'It's a hobby. Whatever.'
One thing I've learned in my limited experience is you can justify anything intellectually. There are a million reasons to stay with someone, and a million reasons to end something - so you can really only trust your gut.
'Rookie' is not your guide to Being a Teen. It is, quite simply, a bunch of writing and art we like and believe in.
The scariest thing about receiving praise at a young age is the fear of burning out or losing it, or proving people right that you were just a novelty. Obviously, I can see mistakes in things that I've done or said and can see flaws in things I've made, but that's just part of growing.
Sometimes 'Rookie' is written about like, 'Finally! Something for alternative girls!' and I'm like, 'No!' Obviously it's not for everyone, but I used to think that there are cheerleaders, and there are art kids.
I like 'My So-Called Life' and the 'Riot Grrl Movement' and 'Freaks and Geeks.'
With acting, I felt like I had a lot to prove because I didn't study it; I didn't work my way up in a traditional sense.
When I was around 12, my heroes were Cindy Sherman and Bob Dylan and Samuel Westing from the kids' novel 'The Westing Game'.
I'm a lot more productive in an actual office. I love being around our other editors, and going there every day alleviates some of the guilt that I think many self-employed people feel when you know you could always be working from your laptop at home. I feel so relaxed there, while completely engaged and inspired.
I feel like, maybe in the '90s, 'Rookie' would have been shamed for trying to reach a lot of people or trying to be 'mainstream', but I'm so pleased that our readers are happy to see me promoting the 'Rookie' yearbook on TV or whatever.
I still care a lot about my personal style, and since moving to New York and having a little more control over my own money, I've been able to make my 12-year-old fashion nerd dream comes true.
Having your stuff online - some people think of it as gimmicky, but in a way, it's one of the most pure forms of having your work judged.
I don't know that a lot of boys read 'Rookie', but we get quite a few nice comments and e-mails from them. To say I'm devoted to making it girls-only is a little extreme, because I don't actively try to exclude everyone else, just make sure girls know that this space is for them first and foremost.
I'm very interested in film, but any more involvement would happen organically. I'm not really seeking anything out, just looking at projects that come up that interest me.
I've witnessed so many meetings and conferences where people are trying to figure out what young people think, and my feeling has consistently been that you should just ask them.
I love art, but I don't think I'm especially good at it. Fashion I think I could imagine, but I'm not really sure. I think it's easiest for me to picture myself in music.
I think it's just important to be able to keep things to myself and to have these moments that can't be - where I don't put them out and feel like they could be misunderstood, you know?
I don't know if I'll ever make rap music, but I just like people who are like, 'I am going to just find the medium that's best for this idea and master it and do that.'
It's so hard getting rid of something that means something to you, as many of the pieces on our site do for me.
People don't know what to do when writing a story with teens that takes place now - they think you have to make a bunch of references to Facebook.
I'm really good at making teen angst romantic. I'm really good at dealing with heartbreak and things like that and making it into this whole experience. But there's no way to make someone-on-the-Internet-said-something-mean-about-me into romantic angst where you can listen to music and cry or whatever.
That young people don't have valid thoughts about the world because they haven't been alive long enough is sadly a very popular and, frankly, unoriginal sentiment. When I think about that time, I was just responding to the world around me.
I think what human beings need is to be able to laugh at the absurd, hold on to ambiguity, and learn to love nuance, instead of making everything one or the other, and structurally, so much of the Internet and online publishing doesn't have room for any of that.
If there is something that strikes me as interesting or beautiful or something I could learn from, and I don't write it down, then I could be at lunch with you, and it's like there's a pile of laundry in my brain that I haven't put away, and I struggle to really listen, so that's always been important to me.
Before 'This is Our Youth', I did a week of table reading 'Airline Highway' at Steppenwolf in Chicago while the author, Lisa D'Amour, workshopped it.
I'm good at utilising body parts as letters.
I am a feminist - I just think the label reflects my beliefs - but, you know, we say 'Rookie' is a website for teenage girls, not a feminist website for teenage girls. That's not because I'm not proud to call myself a feminist, but when you're calling attention to a project, you can very easily be pigeonholed by choosing certain identifiers.
My anxiety has gotten worse as I've graduated and gotten older, and I still feel like 'Rookie' is a place where I can talk about that, and hopefully someone relates to it.
It's great that with the Internet, there has come this sense of creative independence.
I actually never liked writing on my own or in school until I'd had my blog for a while and realized I'd been writing every day for years.
