I bumped into Tavi Gevinson's talk on TED this week. I've always been a fan of hers, which can prove to be quite challenging at the level of self perception. How do you admire and aspire towards the qualities of someone younger, with less experience, and how do you justify your lack of inspiration by comparison? Parents must go through something like this when their children exhibit true brilliance and genuine inspiration, threatening solid belief systems with their ethereal nonchalance.
The reason for which I was always so interested in this lovely young person of the female sex, was her honesty. Her writing and visuals, her collages, her outfits, her taste it's all so honest, so genuine and in this sense sort of bold. This young girl exhibits this great courage to be herself, to have faith in herself and honor what she believes in. There is an amazing maturity to her work, the issues she tackles as a teenager are not only serious and relevant to all of us, but core issues that end up defining our identities. The fact that she is so lucid during this passion and hormone fueled time of her life is a gift. I work hard to achieve that level of balance and perspective, I practice self-discipline with regards to honoring and manifesting myself.
I admire her sense of independence, and her asserting the belonging to the inherent gender role through her intimate appreciation of feminist values. Her perspective is a testimony that there has been true progress on that cultural front. And although we are all superficially happily post-feminists, we still have a duty to ourselves to define our relationship with this apparently reconciled socio-cultural issue.
I resonated with her words deeply, and mostly I resonated with this courageous modesty of owning up to your own beliefs. Although I'm a bit older than Tavi, I feel that her and I are coming of age at the same time, although I think she has a head start.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/tavi_gevinson_a_teen_just_trying_to_figure_it_out.html
