Tavi Gevinson

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When I first watched Bette Davis in 'All About Eve', I was struck by how much I felt that she is Margo Channing and that she's Bette Davis, where she was able to do both, where you're like, 'What an icon.'
- Tavi Gevinson
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I was eight years old when Miley Cyrus made her debut on Disney Channel's 'Hannah Montana' and beginning my senior year of high school when she delivered the VMAs performance that single-handedly butchered the teddy-bear industry.
- Tavi Gevinson
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I'd like 'Rookie' to be a helpful resource, but I never want it to be too prescriptive. Hopefully, it also makes the reader feel encouraged to think for herself.
- Tavi Gevinson
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When you work online, staying on the Internet more than you need to feels like being at the office after hours.
- Tavi Gevinson
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Solange's new album, 'A Seat at the Table', is so many things at once: an antidote to hate, a celebration of blackness, an expression of the right to feel it all. After a move to Louisiana and period of self-reflection, the artist joined forces with a range of collaborators to put her new discoveries to music.
- Tavi Gevinson
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I first met Solange at a party for her gorgeous and inspiring website, Saint Heron. I'd already had so many phases of listening exclusively to 2012's 'True' and admired her activism and radiant style.
- Tavi Gevinson
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For all of the continued awareness of systemic violence and oppression, there isn't a lot of talk about that psychological toll of racism, at least in white circles and white media.
- Tavi Gevinson
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Maybe I need to make a change, or maybe it's living here in New York or using social media or working in media and entertainment, but I feel like I'm constantly trying to maintain this sense of, 'Why do I do what I do?'
- Tavi Gevinson
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I usually end up making a huge mess every morning when I get dressed. My outfit affects my whole day. I'm always running late, and I'm always trying to make sure I feel really good in what I'm wearing, because if you're wearing something you're not comfortable in, it ruins your day.
- Tavi Gevinson
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Half of my closet is Barbie clothes - PVC skirts, cropped fuzzy sweaters, and velvet minis.
- Tavi Gevinson
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I get breakfast when everyone else is on their lunch break. I usually go to Dimes, which is a short walk from my apartment. Usually, I'll have chia pudding or an acai bowl and toast and sausage.
- Tavi Gevinson
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My to-do list is the only form of organization I have, other than my iCal. It's not all work stuff; it's a lot of movies that I want to watch sooner rather than later. I have a list that's like, 'Read an essay from this book, then this one, then go back to this one.'
- Tavi Gevinson
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I think everybody should go to high school. It's horrible, and it unites you with other people.
- Tavi Gevinson
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You don’t need to be a completely complete human right now … That’s what makes you human.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Inspirational
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You don’t have to be special, you just have to be kind.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Special You
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What makes a strong female character is a character who has weaknesses, who has flaws, who is maybe not immediately likable, but eventually relatable.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Strong
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Feminism was not a rulebook but a discussion, a conversation, a process...
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Feminism
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Women are complicated...not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy, and women happen to be people.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Crazy
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I wanted to start a website for teenaged girls that was not kind of this one-dimensional strong character empowerment thing, because one thing that can be very alienating about a misconception of feminism is that girls then think that to be feminists, they have to live up to being perfectly consistent in their beliefs, never being insecure, never having doubts, having all the answers...and this is not true and actually, recognizing all the contradictions I was feeling became easier once I realized that feminism was not a rule book but a discussion, a conversation, a process.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Girl
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I try to make everything creative because it's stimulating. There is this great Stanley Kubrick quote somewhere about how life is sort of bad and how creating is important because it lets a little light in.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Creating
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If you are intimidated by the artists who came before you, understand you too have a place, right next to them.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Artist
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Just really be passionate and stick to your creative vision. Because it's competitive, and there are so many mind games and so many things that could get in the way. But success is the best revenge, so build yourself up rather than knock others down.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Revenge
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The best cure for procrastination is to have so much on your plate that procrastination is no longer an option.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Procrastination
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I will try to hold on to the intense feeling. I will both be glad that that’s no longer happening and kind of miss it. When you’re 14, you’re basically on drugs all the time - the hormones in your body are so crazy. But I really loved and appreciated the intensity of that. And you’re experiencing everything for the first time, so everything feels like an epiphany. And, like, I really liked the experience of having a crush, because I was like, this is my thing and it doesn’t have to do with you and you’re just some dummy boy for me to project on.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Crush
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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 multifaceted - not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy, and women happen to be people.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Crazy
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There's danger in glorifying negative emotions as fuel for art.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Art
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My life motto is basically to lower your standards and expectations so you're never disappointed and never put any trust in anything, and I try to prepare for the day that I wake up and everyone I know is like LOL JK BEST LONG - RUNNING PRACTICAL JOKE EVER, so I've never really let myself freak out or get too excited about anything. Not in an effort to be cool or not care or anything, just out of neurosis.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Running
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I think one of the hardest things to do in film or TV is to make something feel real, which is weird because it's about being a person, and life is something that everyone making films and TV can relate to.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Real
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When you're a kid you're already trying to create your own world and organize the one in front of you, but then you get all insecure around 6th grade and don't think you have a right to share that. I think it was my mom's attitude about art and being part of the narcissistic digital generation or whatever that made me think anyone would care what I had to say about anything!
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Art
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Graduating high school was really emotional for me. I'd obviously made a huge thing out of what that experience was for me, and saying goodbye to it was very weird. So I had to be like, boom, onward and upward.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Goodbye
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When I wrote my blog and went to fashion week, I got a lot of shade from older editors about paying my dues and educating myself. I get where they were coming from, but it's also weird now to see their institutions scramble to use the internet in a way that's not savvy, but genuinely effective and exciting to people. I've been doing that for years.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Fashion
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Some of my clothes are things that we'd play dress up with when we were little, and it's funny that now I'm wearing it like as an everyday thing. But if I say 'vintage' or 'thrifted' on the blog, there's this community of fashion bloggers and I've become sort of tight with some of them, and we like just send each other packages. If I'm thrifting and I find this great dress but it won't fit me and I won't grow into it because I'm impossibly tiny, I don't want to let it sit there. I'll buy it and send it to a friend.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Fashion
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I've never really felt like a journalist. I've felt like a writer and a diarist. I have made myself vulnerable in my writing, and I think that vulnerability makes people strong. My favorite performances or works of art are always people showing that side of themselves.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Art
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I don't think I was ever thinking critically about my aesthetic, I think it's enough when you're little just to understand that you can give yourself the permission to try and see things differently or create something original, even though you probably won't make anything original for a really long time.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Thinking
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I think it's really hard to find a good women's magazine, and I like that Glamour is way more about what you want and not what your man wants. I don't really know what it's like to be a woman yet, so I wouldn't have too much insight, but I guess it would be a bit interesting to have more of that granny style in there. Because I think it should be easier for women to feel like they don't have to be conventionally attractive or think of flattering clothing before they think of fun clothing.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Fun
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I see so few scripts just because, for whatever reason, there just aren't that many good scripts with a young, teenaged girl. So it's always been sporadic. People don't know what to do when writing a story with teens that takes place now - they think you have to make a bunch of references to Facebook.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Girl
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I have a lot of love for the resilience personified in so many achievements made by Americans. I feel not American when that idea of resilience is appropriated to justify discrimination, e.g., "Make America Great Again."
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Achievement
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The Internet, really. It's amazing what you can find. There are so many different resources on the Internet and I got into blogging because of my friend's sister who had a blog, Fashion Robot, which she stopped a few months ago just because it was too much time ... I started taking more of an interest in fashion, and going to more websites like Style.com or whatever. Eventually I made a hasty decision and made my own.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Fashion
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I do think reading is the best practice for writing, along with writing all the time. I actually never liked writing on my own or in school until I'd had my blog for a while and realized I'd been writing every day for years.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Reading
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"Girly" can be limiting if you're told it's the only option. I don't think the solution is to get rid of the girly stuff or decide it's oppressive and get mad at a singer or book for not ACCURATELY REPRESENTING ALL WOMEN. There just needs to be more options for girls who don't identify with the girly aesthetic, and can broaden the idea of what being a girl means. Similarly, there needs to be more of that stuff that can be aesthetically girly, but feminist in the actual message.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Girl
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I have a problem with people saying feminine means anti-feminist, and I think it's counter-productive to immediately associate anything "girly" with vanity or stupidity. I also think it takes away from girls' agency to say that girls who are interested in that kind of thing only are because they don't know what's good for them.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Girl
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I always joke that I'd like to be a cat 'cause then I'll have nine lives, and then I can do like everything. But that's really hard.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Cat
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I don't really read that much stuff about myself anyways, because I feel as though you then develop this mind-set of just making sure other people would approve of your decisions.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: People
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Sometimes people are so unbelievably vitriolic on the Internet because I think that everybody wants to be heard, and the easiest way to be the loudest is to be the hater. But you don't know who's behind the keyboard, and you don't really know if their complaint is about the topic at hand or if they're just bitter about something else.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Thinking
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We all have the people we follow on Tumblr whose opinions or taste we respect. And I think because you see so much more variety of opinions and everything on the internet, it's less decided that something is good or bad. It's more like we all just sort of like what we like.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Thinking
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I do find working with people in the entertainment industry hard. It can cause anxiety and depression.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: People
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My only job has been to say that you have to, try different things and let yourself become a different person, have experiences.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Jobs
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Meaning lies in the magic of the coincidence that you should come across work at just the right time.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Lying
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I feel like a young adult. In high school I never felt like my professional life and my personal life were at odds, because Rookie felt like the bridge.
- Tavi Gevinson
Collection: Jobs