Tavi Gevinson Got 'Horrible Grades' to Run Rookie

Photo by Petra Collins

By Leeann Duggan

Maybe it’s finally time to stop calling Tavi Gevinson a wunderkind. Since she began writing at 12, it’s been a journalist’s favorite cliché to label her “wise beyond her years,” which is, of course, as true as it is backhanded. This year, 18-year-old Gevinson moved to New York for her role in This Is Our Youth, and celebrates the third anniversary of her website with the release of Rookie: Yearbook Three. Edited by Gevinson, it’s a love letter to Rookie’s ”junior year,” and is as funny and warm and smart as the singular space she created online.

We spoke with Gevinson (who, full disclosure, used to be my boss when I wrote for Rookie) on Halloween, as she drove to the Cort Theatre in Midtown for an evening performance of This Is Our Youth, about making the book, moving away from nostalgia, her future plans for the site, and the one thing all Rookie girls have in common.

Hi, Tavi! What are you doing tonight?
“I have a show, then my friends and I are going out dancing at this place that’s not really a dancing spot, but my roommate’s boyfriend DJs, so we can kill everyone’s vibe and just play disco.”

Disco’s a real obsession of mine. I did a story for Rookie once about my love of big, spiral disco curls and Scavullo makeup.
“I remember that! I’m dressed as Chloë Sevigny and Last Days of Disco tonight.”

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So, I love that Rookie still posts three times a day, and preserves these stories in the book every year. Would you say being “slow” is part of Rookie’s values?
“Yeah, definitely. Part of it is that it couldn’t be any other way. Because, when I started Rookie, my dad was like, ‘How are you going to run this?’ And I said, ‘Well, the people writing it have my same schedule, and we’ll just do three posts and they’ll go up after school.’ And, I didn’t want to make something where people felt forced to turn out content and talk about things that they didn’t really agree with or believe in. I wanted every piece to be carefully edited. And, with the book, I get this selfish creative satisfaction out of it, because I love the process of putting it together and art directing it. So, I think it’s really important that Rookie exists tangibly, too. It’s something that people can have a closer relationship to than just reading it online.”

And, the Rookie audience is super passionate about having something they can hold in their hands.
“300%, yeah. 2013 was the best year for vinyl since tape cassettes or something — I may not be a great source on this.”

I read that, too — Urban Outfitters is now the biggest source of vinyl sales. [Editor’s note: This claim has since been debunked.]
“It’s funny, I look at Instagram, and girls love putting the book with their other cool shit, and that’s so special to me. I mean, I have a huge magazine collection myself, and always loved biannual, book-like magazines, so that’s the kind of thing I wanted [to do] myself.”

I think that’s why Rookie inspires such devotion, too. It doesn’t feel like one of those places on the Internet where content appears, only to disappear into this black hole. Have you had to fight to maintain that slower pace?
“Well, on one hand, I do love every post being super edited and scheduled on time — but there are definitely instances where I wish we could say something about something right now, current-events wise. So, I do foresee some kind of in-between in the future. It won’t be churnalism exactly, but [we] can make Rookie more like the conversation that happens online when shit happens.”

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Rookie occupies a really interesting space online. I used to describe it as a site for cool teenage girls, and now I describe it as “The New Yorker for girls.”
“I actually disagree with that. Because, I want to make sure there’s light stuff, as well, like DIYs. I mean, New Yorker is probably one of the only magazines I read, but I think branding like New Yorker junior would feel inaccessible or exclusive. I tried to avoid that, which is hard when you only do three posts a day. But, I totally get what you’re saying and thank you for that.”

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I think that’s my way of communicating how smart it is, and not this volume business the Internet’s become.
“Well, I just think on the Internet, stuff happens, and then it explodes, and everyone has to react right away and everyone feels like they have to form an opinion about it right away, for reasons that really only come down to traffic, and that just creates such a snake-eating-its-own-tail situation. I think the finest pieces come from people actually taking time to sit with an idea, instead of coming up with the most contrarian thing they can say and just putting it out there immediately.”

I also think you’re an archivist at heart, a collector and a sorter of stuff, so it makes sense that you’d want to memorialize and recontextualize all these stories via the yearbooks.
“Yeah, and I want that feeling to bleed into every last detail of the book. I can walk you through the book and point out something on every page — like, the fabric in the background is a dress I had since I was 13, the stickers were scanned and cut out and pasted from my diary, and some of it is just shit I bought on Etsy just for the book and has no meaning for me and that’s great, too.”

Is it important to you that the book has that sort of homespun feel?
“Yeah. The book has the feel of something like a diary or a zine — basically the outlets you have when the media that’s being thrown at you isn’t meant for you or isn’t accessible. And also [on the site], I like that every month is a different theme and I really like rounding those out as completely different, individual worlds. To convey that visually is so fun. The fonts, the borders, and even the light in the photos changes month to month. And, I don’t know how important that is. I don’t know if there’s even an ethos behind that, but it’s something I take immense pleasure in.”

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