news

Spirit Animal of the Week: Tavi Gevinson

Spirit animal of the week: Tavi Gevinson

 

 

 

 

 

By MAMAMIA TEAM

We’re trying something new this Thursday evening: Spirit Animals.

Basically, a Spirit Animal is a thing or a person you’re loving this week; someone who has done something cool that you want to emulate in your own life.

It might be because of something the person has written or said. It might be what they didn’t say. It might be something they wore. Basically take the term as liberally as you wish and tell us: what’s or who is making this week a little bit more awesome for you.

And our inaugural spirit animal this week is – drumroll please – Tavi Gevinson, the 17-year-old  blogger at The Style Rookie and founder and editor of a website aimed at young women, Rookie Mag. She is just about to start her final year of high school (over-achiever much?).

Instagram photo by writer Benjamin Law, who moderated the Tavi talk.

Hundreds of teenage girls turned out to see Tavi Gevinson in Australia this weekend, when she delivered a talk at the Opera House as part of the Ideas at the House series.

And a quite few not-so-teenaged women and men showed up too – including members of the Mamamia team – to see this wunderkind in action.

In her talk, titled Tavi’s Big, Big World (at 17), Tavi candidly discussed her struggles with depression, her concerns about being a cliche, the phenomenon of ‘fangirling’ (think enthusiastic One Direction or Doctor Who fans), and how not to procrastinate. Her advice? Just have so much on that you can’t possibly find time to play Angry Birds.

Mamamia Rogue editor Rosie Waterland took her 10-year-old niece Allira (who wore Tavi-esque floral cat ears) along and she LOVED IT. It was kind of lovely to see a tween looking up to someone who is unquestionably a fabulous role model rather than a pop star who has misplaced her pants in a music video.

After the show Tavi kindly signed autographs and Allira managed to snag herself one (and Tavi was very excited about Allira’s fabulous headgear):

The clip of her talk at the Opera House hasn’t been published yet. But it was just about as awesome as this.

Who’s your Spirit Animal of the week?