Style rookie grows up
At the ripe old age of 19, Tavi Gevinson, an ex-fashion blogger, has switched gears
On a Tuesday afternoon in New York, Tavi Gevinson was pacing outside her doctor’s office near Broadway and 21st. Gevinson, 19, is in her first year at NYU and has kicked off the term with a fall book tour for her fourth and final instalment of Rookie Yearbook, a compendium of articles published on her Rookie Mag site.
On this bright October day, she’s wearing “a big red sweatshirt” that reads ‘Tuesday,’ she says, speaking on her cellphone. “Red,” she wrote in Sheila Heti’s
Women in Clothes, “translates femininity to power.” She paired the sweatshirt with black pants (“pants are kind of new to me,” the former blogger behind Style Rookie says) and black ankle boots — black, “the uniform of New Yorkers.”
Gevinson landed in New York over a year ago, ahead of starring in Steppenwolf’s Broadway revival of This
Is Our Youth, for which she received rave reviews. The New York Times says Gevinson “nails exactly the aggressive defensiveness of a girl who sees boys as both the enemy and salvation.”
With a full day ahead, Gevinson is pacing, waiting and carrying a blue leather school bag.
Gevinson references lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s 1976 song “Amelia”: People will tell you where they’ve gone/ They’ll tell you where to go/ But till you get there yourself you never really know.
She is talking about what she’s learned over the years from the contributors to her site, which publishes personal essays, informational and tongue-in-cheek how-tos, photography, art and celebrity interviews.
“The best feeling for me is when I can experience Rookie as a reader,” says Gevinson. “I think that it really is affirming to just watch other people try and understand their own experiences and being as candid, earnest or ugly as they need to be in order to get to the truth of the matter.” Gevinson founded Rookie Mag when she was15 years old and feeling that we needed more complex depictions of women in media (she founded Style Rookie when she was 12). An online haven for young women to learn, share and grow, Rookie Mag is the spiritual successor to ’90s alternative teen magazine Sassy.
“I basically just tricked a bunch of people into giving me advice, and then published it for other people to see, too,” says Gevinson. But for all its insight, the site has never been prescriptive. “Rookie is not your guide to Being a Teen. It is not a pamphlet on How to Be a Young Woman,” wrote Gevinson in her first editorial letter.
Rookie is an advising big sister, a friend who always listens, someone to laugh and cry with.
“For me, it’s always been with Rookie trying to walk a line between not wanting to romanticize the pain and the angst and sometimes actual depression of being a teenager but also needing to find the upside of it,” says Gevinson, which she admits is difficult.
“There’s nothing more annoying than saying ‘Look on the bright side’ or ‘It gets better’ to someone who’s still in it.”
Gevinson, who graduated high school before starting on Yearbook Four, is still in it. “I was trying to embrace the unknown,” says Gevinson. “I’m a year ahead of Rookie. I was trying to enjoy that uncertainty and that void.”
In her editor’s letter she consoles readers that it does, in fact, get better, although some things do get worse.
“I do feel that (Yearbook’s senior issue) is a lot more optimistic about growing up,” adds Gevinson.