Love, Hate, and Tavi

I love Tavi Gevinson. Sure, I went through a weird stage of coming home drunk and leaving ambiguously rude comments on her blog, but I’m over that. Which is good, since, you know, our age-difference is roughly 8 years and I really should know by now not to pick on people on the internet, especially when drunk. I truly enjoy reading her blog, The Style Rookie. It’s one of the few blogs I follow that I’m actually excited to see updated, and it’s been fun to watch it evolve and grow over the past few years. I checked it out for the first time a couple years ago when Tavi’s name began floating around the internet in connection to “13-year-old fashion blogger.” I checked it out because, as I said to myself, “holy shit, a middle schooler has a blog that isn’t Blingee’d out* or resembles the Expage I made when I was a pre-teen? What has the world come to?” When I realized that Tavi was actually smart and obviously rich, I added The Style Rookie to the roster of mindless fashion blogs that I was into following at the time, because that’s kind of what it was. And that’s what I was into for some shitty reason. But right about when I started getting over fashion and style blogs, Tavi did too. (This post is seriously awesome and marks the moment when I began truly respecting this girl). And she started hanging out with Kathleen Hanna, and stopped posting runway photos. She got into ouija, My So-Called Life, The Virgin Suicides, The Heathers, and Sassy. I mean, she’s me when I was a pre-teen/teenager, but with a better vocabulary, better hair, more money, internet access, and, you know, experiencing these things nearly ten years later in 2010 or whatever. Tavi reminds me of my boyfriend’s 15-year old sister who is so much cooler than all of her stupid tiny friends. Sure, there are a lot of things about Tavi that can be criticized (this article has some good points, and there’s a lot more criticism that can be found online that’s actually pretty lame), but who is truly perfect on the internet? Basically, I like Tavi because she’s smart and writes things that I enjoy reading, and I dislike her because Courtney Love sends her awesome dresses and Kathleen Hanna gives her awesome sweaters and she’ll never have to have a shitty service industry job and struggle to pay for her rent and schooling. Yeah, I’m jealous of a 15-year old. And that’s silly, but that’s not what this post is about. 

* Tavi's blog does have some Blingee's, but they're not immature because they're IRONIC, OKAY?

Yesterday the website Rookie was launched, edited by Tavi and featuring pieces written by famous indie-boners like Zooey Deschanel, JD Samson, Fred Armisan, and Miranda July, and a bunch of hip-looking young people from the only cool cities in the US (aka N.Y.C. and L.A.). It’s an online magazine for high school girls, which is great because young people need more websites that aren’t flooded with weight-loss ads and hair-removal tips, but it also sucks because I’m not a fucking teenager any more. I wish Tavi would tell me how to be a “back-to-school beauty” for my first day of grad school, which is quickly approaching. I really was born a decade too early. Regardless, you should know that I’m going to hit up Tavi’s new site like I’m still in high school, partly because I kind of wish I still was, and partly because I’m curious as to when the whole “back to school vibes” thing is finally going to die. I really am done criticizing Tavi, though. I’m sure there are a bunch of English majors complaining about how they got a college degree, spent years in the publishing industry, and still haven’t edited anything that has gotten to a larger audience than Rookie will, but they’re just old and whiny.