Tavi Gevinson isn’t just a teen publishing sensation co-founding magazines and online zines like Rookie and attending to Tumblr on a daily basis. She’s now acting alongside Kieran Culkin (that’s Macauley’s younger brother) and Michael Cera (the one with the squeaky voice) in the play This Is Our Youth. And to promote the Broadway production they’re all in together she did a Reddit AMA(Ask Me Anything), where members of the public or whoever can ask her questions directly.
And what she had to say about role models and inspirations was very interesting, and seemed to totally gel with what (her mate) Lorde’s previously said about role models and getting a chance to fuck up while you’re young. When asked if she ever regrets decisions she’s made in the past, the 18-year-old replied, ‘I’m comfortable with my relative role-model status as it relates to my creative pursuits. But I’m very happy that it doesn’t seem contradictory to the work that I do that I should also have space to experiment and make questionable personal life-related decisions like anyone else my age.’
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She added, ‘I'm pretty pleased to meet girls at Rookie events who feel inspired by Rookie to make their own shit but aren't looking to me as like, a beacon of purity.’
Tavi, who used to be a prodigy style blogger when she was aged 11, also explained how she deals with impostor syndrome, or ‘the bane of my existence’, as she puts it. First off, she has role models who feel good about themselves, ‘I look to my role models and remember that nobody, no matter how “aw shucks” they seem in interviews, can get anything done without, well, believing in themselves.’
Secondly, she keeps busy and gets shit done. ‘I try to stay so inspired to get work done that there isn’t even time to be insecure about it, I just have to do it. That means... watching movies, reading books, consuming, finding out what Rookie readers want to see on our site.’
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Then, as if you can learn arrogance and self-belief by aural osmosis, she listens to Kanye West. ‘I also have playlists – mostly Kanye, also some Fiona Apple and Eve and Kelly Rowland and much more.’
Finally, her advice is to make sure you remember this one thing Kate Nash (of all people) once said. ‘Also mantras. Kate Nash told me to say to myself every morning: “I’m a badass bitch from hell and nobody can fuck with me.” Saying it out loud makes it more true than if you just told yourself it in your head. So I recommend that. You got this.’
As for the haters? ‘Time spent dignifying h8ers is time better spent dignifying people who are supportive.’
Sounds a whole lifetime’s worth of good advice to us – maybe Tavi’s not mucking up as much as she wants us to think she is…
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.