"Ms. Astley said that when she interviewed potential new employees, she always made sure they were prepared to mentor readers. 'You become a role model,' Ms. Astley said."

something about this quote from the new york times underscores that it really was ten years ago that i worked at teen vogue. let the (my) record show that i was the driving force behind all early articles on critical mothers and that i made sure they were about critical fathers, too.  

whiskeybot:

“…This will not matter, because her parents work in finance, and she has good manners, and she’s going to marry up, and she’s going to get into the movies (not just guest appearances in CSI), and she’s going to launch some clothing lines at Target (no, wait, I think she already did that), and a personal fragrance (I think she did that too), and parlay all her bad press into some self-serious complaints, making good on every opportunity to monetize her career at the expense of making actual art.”

—

Here’s the kind of thing a music critic seriously writes when bashing Taylor Swift. This is just after he writes that he doesn’t “get” or “like” her “over-produced” music and what he calls “apparently honest” lyrics. 

EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME???????

womenasobjects:

“I see ‘teenage girl’ as more of an aesthetic stance, a place of radical, highly material (yes, the internet is (im)material), abject positioning in the world. A position in which one wields ones own objecthood playfully, glitteringly, and problematically.”

—Kate Durbin on her tumblr art project, “Women as Objects.” (via likeapairofbottlerockets)

categoryerror:

“Who are you?”

jemima kirke was so great in tiny furniture. in the spirit of “i once dated stephen king’s son for a month,” but significantly more boring, is the fact that when i worked at teen vogue i used to interview lena dunham constantly. especially the first year. this is Bad Journalism, to interview the same person over and over again, but i didn’t figure out how to make the pool more diverse until later, after the initial hazing, which included showing layout after layout to anna with, like, all different kinds of hair accessories for spring, and she’d look at it, her arms already crossed, and say “i don’t know what i’m looking at,” and i’d redo it, and then she’d say that again, and then she’d keep saying that until i showed her a page that was just one kind of hair accessory—all barrettes, say—and then she would know what she was looking at and approve it and then the page would probably get killed anyway. feminist boredom, but i still think saying “i don’t know what i’m looking at” is amazing, it’s so deeply bitchy, and has a lot of potential for other kinds of interactions. at the very least the affect is inspirational. 

anyway, lena was only in high school and she was really nice and smart and quotable and worried she would only get into oberlin, then worried about going to oberlin, and i gave her a few pep talks. i also remember telling her that i had gone to see her mom’s show over the weekend and that it had been really good, which it was. 

i saw tiny furniture for the first time a few weeks ago and liked it, and thought jemima kirke’s character was probably like the apolitical vaguely artsy girls i hated in real life in college who all seemed really impressed, even a few years after graduation, that i had an actual job and wasn’t, like, living off my parents. i guess some of those girls ended up working at vogue or as, like, gallery assistants, or assistants to fashion designers or maybe they started their own capsule collections or have written books on crafting. i am sure they still make occasional appearances in the pages of the styles section. 

“he’s kind of a big deal on youtube.”

rgr-pop:

sl33pcr33p:

anglophonic-blog:

“This Is Not Grunge” wants you to know that “THIS IS NOT GRUNGE.”

Unfortunately I am 40, and I used to go to grunge shows. 

This is the kind of person who bought $150 Nirvana tickets from scalpers and got dropped off at the L7 show by her stepfather Gary.

So lemme just say “Slightly different shade of hair color…but yes, unfortunately it is.”  The fake kind. 

As any (honest) music writer will tell you…everything ALWAYS used to be better in the old days.  Except when it sucked…which was all the time.  Fake-ass motherfuckers have been ruining scenes since time began.

-

Please put all of your age-related insults in my ask box. 

Can the internet take a break from shitting on “posers”* for like, eternity, and instead admire this girl’s makeup?

*The poser is a construct invented by those who are fucking terrified of their “taste” being usurped by the mainstream, but can’t express it in a way that isn’t fucking offensive and reductive.

Can the internet take a break from shitting on “posers” and instead love and admire posers?

100% pro-poser as an affective and political position. 

(Source: blog-anglophonic)

penpal adventures!

sippor:

Sarah Pinder and I are putting together a zine!

Call for Submissions:
Penpal Adventures! A Curated Zine on the Experiences of Girls as Penpals

Were you a pre-teen or teen girl in the late 80s and early 90s? Do you remember penpal ads and slambooks? Did you collect stationery,…

(missworld) (suckmyleftone) (missworld) [photo via]

“THEY WRITE THEIR OWN FANZINES, WHICH ARE KIND OF LIKE SCUM MANIFESTOS FOR 12-YEAR-OLDS” 

OMG. 

these grrrl mixtapes are the adorablest

(tulletulle)(missworld) 

(via backtotheeighties)

i made my parents drive all over north carolina and stop in piggly wiggly grocery stores 3x/day in pursuit of this issue of seventeen in 1986.