All hail Tavi Gevinson, the new queen of teen magazines. Gevinson, everyone’s favorite teenage fashionista has embarked on a new project, Rookie. Named after her own personal blog, Rookie aims to be a fun, smart, and totally age-appropriate magazine geared toward teenage girls. Each month’s content will revolve around a theme and feature writing from a bevy of teenagers as well as adult bloggers and art makers. Posts generally go live three times per day: after school, around dinner time, and right before bed.
This month’s theme is beginnings, “firsts and starts, back to school, and of course, the beginning of Rookie,” says Gevinson in her first editorial letter for the site. It was first reported that Rookie would be a collaboration between Gevinson and Jane Pratt of Sassy Magazine fame. Instead, it seemed like Gevinson had a change of heart and desired to remain more independent. “It’s just that I want to have full control, and it’s important to me that we’re independent, not so we can be indie and ‘down with the man,’ but because I find a lot of comfort knowing that it’s all in my control,” says Gevinson in a statement.
Steering clear of your run-of-the-mill teen magazine content that focuses on boys, cheap fashion tricks, sex, and more boys, Rookie’s content is a lot more far reaching and innovative than anything that was available to me at 15. Posts include an article on how to stop girl on girl hate, high school survival advice from adults who have been there, and a style guide for channeling your inner 1950s style goddess.
I can’t help being a little jealous of today’s teenage girls and all the options afforded to them. While there were a slew of teen mags when I was growing up, most of them had the same content, the same cover girls, and seemed like nothing more than Cosmopolitan lite for teens. I’m happy to see a young lady producing the type of content she wants instead of just reading what has been put out there for her. Bravo Tavi Gevinson for being a total badass DIY-er in every sense of the phrase.
