Tavi Gevinson is in the country right now, laying down some truths, sharing her premature wisdom with the floral headress’ed masses. Her [sold out] keynote address at the Melbourne Writers Festival is yet to come but her Ideas at the House have been and gone.
We went along, took some shitty instagrams and basked in the #inspo glow of it all.
From what we can remember of an afternoon getting high on Tavi talent, the desire to be a more successful and/or better person was palpable as everyone exited the motivation bong theatre. Besides a whole lot of questions re: just how great it will be when we she becomes our best friend, here are some bite-size bits we took away from it all (spoiler alert for anyone heading along to the Melbourne talk) :
Recommended reading.
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Human, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology by Lawrence Weschler + I Love Dick by Chris Kraus + Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
Reminder: there are just so many ways that being a teenager is fucking batshit.
When it came to question time at the end many a teen bolted to the mics, most started out thirstily professing their love for Tavi (cute), then plugged their owns blogs (cute…?) and then asked their questions. And the contrast between the questions askers and the question answerer (Tavi) was stark.
Yes. Tavi makes being young and hormone fuelled seem easy, even breezy. But as she reminds us (*At 17), it’s not. For anyone (*sigh* Thanks, Obama!). And that’s okay.
“It just made more sense to me to be a feminist than to not be a feminist”
Oxford Dictionary definition:
Feminism [mass noun] noun : the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
A 17 year old thinks that that makes sense and yet many fully formed (physically speaking, of course) adults do not.
Recommended watching.
“Fangirling out” on whatever the fangirl you want is the best
(*Fangirling too hard may result in ascension to a higher plane of existence)
Gevinson spoke about the art of being a pedal to the metal/heart on the line/I li’erally die fan of “anything from Taylor Swift to baby walruses” and the people who make you feel like a dud for being overly enthusiastic about those things (“they pretty much shouldn’t be friends with anyone…”).
Which was especially poignant, because:
Comparisons were drawn between David Attenborough and 1D fans, who are both quite obviously bey.ond passionate about something (nature and 1D, respectively); as a result, their wonder shines through and it is truly a beautiful thing.
And in that moment, they are infinite.
TL;DR
This, all the time:
