Four years ago, today exactly, actually,
I started a fashion blog called "Style Rookie."
Last September of 2011,
I started an online magazine for teenage girls
called "Rookiemag.com."
My name's Tavi Gevinson, and...the title
of my talk is, "Still Figuring It Out."
And the MS Paint quality of my slides
was a total creative decision in keeping
with today's theme, and has nothing to do
with my inability to use PowerPoint.
[laughing]
So I edit the site for teenage girls.
I'm a feminist, I am kind of
a pop culture nerd, and I think a lot
about what makes a strong female character.
Movies and TV shows; these things have influenced
my own web sites.
So, I think the question of what makes
a strong female character often goes misinterpreted,
and instead we get these two dimensional super women
who maybe have one quality that's played up a lot
like, you know, a Catwoman type,
or she, like, plays her sexuality up a lot,
and it's seen as power.
But they're not strong characters who happen
to be female, they're completely flat,
and they're basically cardboard characters.
The problem with this is that then 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 multi-faceted.
Not because women are crazy,
but because people are crazy,
and women happen to be people.
[laughing]
So, the flaws are the key.
I'm not the first person to say this.
What makes a strong female character
is a character who has weaknesses,
who has flaws, who is maybe not
immediately likeable, but eventually relatable.
I don't like to acknowledge a problem without also
acknowledging those who work to fix it.
So, just wanted to acknowledge shows like Mad Men,
movies like Bridesmaids, whose female characters,
or protagonists, are all complex,
multi-faceted.
Lena Dunham who's on here, her show on HBO
that premieres next month, "Girls,"
she said she wanted to start it
because she felt that every woman she knew
was just a bundle of contradictions.
And that feels accurate for all people,
but you don't see women represented like that as much.
Congrats, guys.
[laughing]
But I don't feel that-- I still feel that there
is some types of women who are not represented that way.
And one group that we'll focus on today are teens.
Because I think teenagers are especially contradictory,
and still figuring it out, and in the '90s
there was Freaks and Geeks,
and My So-Called Life, and their characters,
Lindsay Weir, and Angela Chase,
I mean the whole premise of the shows
were just them trying to figure themselves out
basically, but those shows
only lasted a season each, and I haven't really
seen anything like that on TV since.
So this is a scientific diagram of my brain,
around the time when I started watching
those TV shows.
I was, like, ending middle school,
starting high school, I'm a sophomore now.
And I was trying to reconcile all of these differences
that you're told you can't be
when you're growing up as a girl.
You can't be smart and pretty,
you can't be a feminist
who's also interested in fashion.
You can't care about clothes if it's not for the sake
of what other people, usually men,
will think of you.
So, I was trying to figure all of that out,
and I felt a little confused,
and I said so on my blog,
and I've said that I wanted to start
a website for teenage girls that was not this,
kind of one dimensional strong character,
empowerment thing.
Because I think one thing that can be very alienating
about a misconception of feminism
is that girls then think that to be a feminist,
they have to live up to, you know,
being perfectly consistent in your beliefs,
never being insecure,
never having doubt, having all of the answers.
And this is not true, and actually reconciling
all the contradictions I was feeling became easier
once I understood that feminism
was not a rulebook,
but a discussion, a conversation,
a process.
And this is a spread from a zine
that I made last year when,
I mean I think I've let myself go a bit
on the illustration front since, but...yeah.
So, I said on my blog that I wanted to start
this publication for teenage girls,
and asked people to submit their writing,
their photography, whatever,
to be a member of our staff.
I got about 3,000 emails.
My editorial director and I went through them,
and put together a staff of people,
and we launched last September.
And this is an excerpt from my first editor's letter
where I say that,
"Rookie, we don't have all the answers.
We're still figuring it out, too."
But the point is not to give girls the answers,
and not even give them permission
to find the answers themselves,
but hopefully inspire them
to understand that they can give themselves
that permission, they can ask their own questions,
find their own answers, all of that.
And Rookie, I think we've been trying
to make it a nice place for all of that
to be figured out.
So, I'm not saying, like, be like us,
and we're perfect role models, 'cause we're not.
But we just want to help represent girls
in a way that shows those different dimensions.
I mean, we have articles called
"On Taking Yourself Seriously,"
"How to Not Care What People Think of You."
But we also have articles, like, oops...
Oh, no, no, mm...
I'm figuring it out, ha-ha.
[laughing]
If you use that, you can get away with anything.
We also have articles called,
"How to Look Like You Weren't Just Crying
in Less Than Five Minutes."
So, all of that being said, I still really appreciate
those characters, you know, in movies,
and, you know, articles like that on our site
that are just about being totally powerful.
Maybe finding your acceptance with yourself,
and self-esteem, and your flaws,
and how you accept those.
So, what I want you to take away from my talk,
the lesson of all this, is to just be Stevie Nicks.
Like, that's all you have to do.
[laughing]
Because my favorite thing about her,
other than, like everything,
is that she is very-- has always been,
unapologetically present on stage,
and unapologetic about her flaws,
and about reconciling all of her contradictory feelings,
and she makes you listen to them,
and think about them.
And yeah so, please be Stevie Nicks.
Thank you.
[clapping]