SHE’S NOT A TYPICAL DISNEY STAR
Rowan Blanchard takes to social media on political and feminist issues
— NEW YORK — At the Metrograph theater on the Lower East Side of New York, Rowan Blanchard wore a knit pleated skirt overlaid by a pleated sleeveless tunic and chunky platform gold glitter shoes, all made and provided by the fashion house Kenzo. Holding a bag of salty popcorn and another bag of Swedish fish, she sat in one of the first few rows, just as a screening of a film she appeared in was about to begin.
Blanchard, the 14-yearold star of the Disney Channel show “Girl Meets World,” a coming-of-age sitcom about a group of friends in New York, had come to the East Coast to celebrate her involvement in a distinctly un-Disney production: “The Realest Real,” a six-minute short film written and directed by Carrie Brownstein of “Portlandia” fame. It is produced, in part, by Kenzo and showcases actors like Natasha Lyonne and Mahershala Ali.
Blanchard had also come for New York Fashion Week, where the press anointed her (as Vanity Fair and New York magazine had done in September) the new face of a creative set populated by young women like Tavi Gevinson.
Blanchard is too young for a driving learner’s permit (she turned 15 on Oct. 14), but she has 4.5 million followers on Instagram and nearly a half-million on Twitter. While so many young celebrities use social media to portray a vanilla image in pursuit of mainstream success, Blanchard is doing the opposite. She relies on social media to showcase herself as quirky, politically aware and a feminist.
On Instagram she posts about #BlackLivesMatter, feminism, LGBT rights, domestic violence and books she is reading: “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” “The Girls,” “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”
On Twitter, she promoted a recent episode of “Girl Meets World” like this: “tn’s ep of GMW we talk about how (gasp!) there’s a world outside of America & cultural appreciation rather than cultural appropriation :).” She identifies as queer, she said, not because she necessarily is gay or bisexual, but because she isn’t necessarily not.
Last week she was in Washington to celebrate Day of the Girl and posted on Instagram a photograph of her with Michelle Obama.
None of this is standard fare for a Disney girl, as Blanchard is well aware. “I would be lying to you if I told you being on Disney wasn’t scary because of the connotation of it: ‘Oh she’s on Disney. Is she going to be a Miley, a Demi or a Selena?’ None of those people have anything to do with any of us,” she said of herself and her castmates, who include Sabrina Carpenter, a musician and actress who is also on her way to post-Disney success.
The third season of “Girl Meets World” takes the main (then-adolescent) characters of “Boy Meets World” (which aired on ABC from 1993 to 2000) and presents them as the married parents of Blanchard’s character. It is uncertain if there will be a fourth
season, despite the show’s popularity. No matter. Blanchard is launched.
At New York Fashion Week, she sat in the front row of Coach’s show and had been invited to attend Rodarte’s. But they took place the same day, and she had already promised Coach her exclusive attendance for the day. Turning down Rodarte “was kind of devastating, but fair enough,” Blanchard said. “There are worse problems in the world.”
She also took part in a presentation by Opening Ceremony, more pageant than fashion show. Along with Rashida Jones, Whoopi Goldberg and others, she walked on stage dressed in clothes by Opening Ceremony and was interviewed by Brownstein and Fred Armisen, another of the creators of “Portlandia.” When Brownstein asked Blanchard how feminism could become more inclusive, Armisen piped in with a comment. Blanchard interrupted and scolded him for being “a man talking over a woman.”
“She’s like Margaret Mead in a (15)-year-old body,” said Michael Jacobs, a creator of “Boy Meets World” and “Girl Meets World.”
“Even I sometimes forget that she’s only (15),” her mother said. (Elizabeth Blanchard is a yoga instructor and a mother of three, juggling the demands of regular family life along with those of a teenage daughter who gets invited to Salma Hayek’s 50th birthday party.)
The screening of “The Realest Real” was by many definitions a spectacle: The lobby and mezzanine filled with people who looked like they could appear on “Sprockets,” most of whom quite likely were too young to understand the reference. The party room upstairs was decorated with large, standing Facebook thumbsup emojis and Instagram hearts.
The main plotline involves Ali, as the director of the “Institute of the Real and the Really Real,” evaluating all that a young woman (played by Laura Harrier) has posted to social media, every last comment and “like” represented by a to-the-ceiling stack of paper (“the cloud,” Ali’s character says).
Blanchard plays the institute director’s assistant, a small role that provides her with the film’s key line. In leading Harrier into Ali’s office, Blanchard asks if she would like a group of her online followers to join her in the room “so you can tell how you’re doing?”
The script resonated with Blanchard, who takes high school classes online and is tutored on the show’s set when filming. “It’s almost scary how you can create a persona on Instagram or Twitter,” she said. “Even if you’re not deliberately creating a persona, you are still doing it.”
It has always been a lot of pressure to be a child star, missing out on the socialization rituals (for better or worse) and so-called normal adolescence. But to be 14 and to have millions of followers can evoke particular angst.
The night she returned to Los Angeles after the fashion week visit, for example, Blanchard attended Beyoncé’s “Formation World Tour” concert at Dodger Stadium.
“I love Beyoncé; I love her so much,” she had said, explaining why she cut her trip to New York short in order to attend. (Her Instagram bio: “Lover of Harry Potter, chocolate and Beyoncé.”)
“That likability factor, the relatability factor, it’s a requirement of being a child actor,” said Brownstein, who cast Blanchard in her short film after taking notice of her, naturally, on social media. “It used to be, you could be likable on the red carpet. Now you need to be likable 24/7,” she added.
The feedback loop of social media can seep into real life. “I found myself not being able to put something in my diary without thinking, ‘Maybe if this is good enough, I’ll publish it,’” Blanchard said. She knows this is not ideal. “This is my diary!” she said, explaining that she hates the feeling that everything she does is for an audience. Yet she is writing a book for Penguin Young Readers that will, in fact, include some of her diary entries.
Last winter she spoke at a conference and wrote an Instagram post about her struggle with depression, saying, “I learned this year that happiness and sadness are not mutually exclusive.” Last October, a teacher on her Disney set died suddenly, and it unleashed a lot of sadness.
Some, she said, commented, “What does this girl know about depression?” It took time to disconnect her emotions from the response of strangers, telling herself, “‘Rowan, you shouldn’t have to defend your depression to get it validated from someone else deep in the internet,’” she said.
Part of her solution was to create a private Instagram account where she can express herself openly to a much smaller group. For young stars, this is a
“It’s the closest thing I think I will feel to going to a regular high school and sharing private things with