Meet Tavi Gevinson, a 16-year-old who’s taking the Internet and publishing industry by storm. A proud feminist (and style blogger and magazine publisher), she also has some definitive ideas about what makes a strong female character. Since so much of what we do as a team is to champion strong women, it only seemed appropriate that we shared Tavi with you.
During a TEDxTeen talk, Tavi spoke about the common depiction of a strong female character and how it’s not really strong at all.
“The question often goes misinterpreted and instead we get these two-dimensional superwomen who maybe have one quality that’s played up a lot like a Catwoman-type or she plays her sexuality up a lot and it’s seen as power,” she says. “They’re not strong characters who happen to be female—they’re completely flat and they’re basically cardboard characters.”
That sort of classification leads to real-life issues, as Tavi explains:
“The problem with this is that people expect women to be that easy to understand and women are mad at themselves for not being that simple when, in actuality, women are complicated and multi-faceted—not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy and women happen to be people.”
See what we’re talking about? She’s kind of a genius, right? It’s hard to believe she’s only 16.
As Tavi continued her talk, she gave props to shows and creators who do understand strong female characters and are working to fix this broken classification, as pictured below:
As far as we’re concerned, Tavi belongs on that list, too. Please do yourself a favor, take a few minutes and watch her talk—it just might turn out to be the very best part of your day.
And file “Tavi Gevinson” under people to watch. Upworthy writer Rebecca Eisenberg says we’ll probably see Tavi’s name with “President” in front of it one day—and we don’t doubt that this young lady will go far. She’s amazement personified. And even at 16 she gets the fact that we’re all still just figuring it out. Which is pretty much what life is all about, isn’t it?
What do you think of Tavi’s talk? And who are some strong female characters that you admire? We’d love for you to share them with us.
This post originally appeared on Brenda Chapman’s blog
