A teen just trying to figure it out

Fifteen-year-old Tavi Gevinson had a hard time finding strong female, teenage role models -- so she built a space where they could find each other. At TEDxTeen, she illustrates how the conversations on sites like Rookie, her wildly popular web magazine for and by teen girls, are putting a new, unapologetically uncertain and richly complex face on modern feminism. (Filmed at TEDxTeen.)

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. (Laughter)

So I edit this 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,

and, you know, movies and TV shows,

these things have influence. My own website.

So I think the question of what makes a strong female

character often goes misinterpreted,

and instead we get these two-dimensional superwomen

who maybe have one quality that's played up a lot,

like a Catwoman type,

or she 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 multifaceted -- not because women are crazy,

but because people are crazy,

and women happen to be people. (Laughter)

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 likable,

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 complex, multifaceted.

Lena Dunham, who's on here, her show on HBO

that premiers 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. (Laughs)

But I don't feel that — I still feel that there are 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 — (Laughter) —

around the time when I was,

when I started watching those TV shows.

I was 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 that out,

and I felt a little confused,

and I said so on my blog,

and I 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

being perfectly consistent in your beliefs,

never being insecure, never having doubts,

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 -- 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 ask 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, "Be like us,"

and "We're perfect role models," because 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 -- I'm figuring it out!

Ha ha. (Laughter)

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 in movies and

articles like that on our site,

that aren't 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 you to take away from my talk,

the lesson of all of this, is to just be Stevie Nicks.

Like, that's all you have to do. (Laughter)

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. (Applause)