I get breakfast when everyone else is on their lunch break. I usually go to Dimes, which is a short walk from my apartment. Usually, I'll have chia pudding or an acai bowl and toast and sausage.
Since the age of 14, I have littered - excuse me, adorned - the Internet with Taylor Swift analyses.
When I was younger, I always liked acting. You know, like, acting locally, or community theater at school. But it's not an especially insured career choice, so I was like, 'It's a hobby. Whatever.'
Sometimes 'Rookie' is written about like, 'Finally! Something for alternative girls!' and I'm like, 'No!' Obviously it's not for everyone, but I used to think that there are cheerleaders, and there are art kids.
When I was around 12, my heroes were Cindy Sherman and Bob Dylan and Samuel Westing from the kids' novel 'The Westing Game'.
Sometimes if you expose your vulnerability, someone else will feel comforted. It's like we're all in this boat together.
I'm a big journaler, so for every new journal, I would change the way my room looked and change the posters on the walls, and I would change what I was wearing, and I would have a playlist, and it all kind of corresponded and matched, and I would change my handwriting in the journals.
My life motto is basically to lower your standards and expectations so you're never disappointed and never put any trust in anything, and I try to prepare for the day that I wake up, and everyone I know is like, 'LOL JK best long-running practical joke ever', so I've never really let myself freak out or get too excited about anything.
As feminism becomes more integrated into mainstream publications and conversation, I feel weary of an obsession of celebrity culture masquerading as activism or as conversation or action. It's clickbait.
I think people can tell when you're pandering to them, and they feel insulted. I think that one thing that is really nice about the work that I do is that I can just sort of make mistakes or try out different ideas or be inconsistent and be vulnerable.
I'm really thankful for every experience I've had, even the ones that were puzzling or disorienting, because they taught me so much.
I first met Solange at a party for her gorgeous and inspiring website, Saint Heron. I'd already had so many phases of listening exclusively to 2012's 'True' and admired her activism and radiant style.
I so think it's limiting to define an audience ahead of time. This is something I've brought on myself by being like, 'There are no 'real' teen publications! That's what I'll do!' But then it's like, well, if I want 'Rookie' to be successful and popular, then people will invalidate the realness by saying it's popular and mainstream.
I feel like, maybe in the '90s, 'Rookie' would have been shamed for trying to reach a lot of people or trying to be 'mainstream', but I'm so pleased that our readers are happy to see me promoting the 'Rookie' yearbook on TV or whatever.
I was eight years old when Miley Cyrus made her debut on Disney Channel's 'Hannah Montana' and beginning my senior year of high school when she delivered the VMAs performance that single-handedly butchered the teddy-bear industry.
Before 'This is Our Youth', I did a week of table reading 'Airline Highway' at Steppenwolf in Chicago while the author, Lisa D'Amour, workshopped it.
Half of my closet is Barbie clothes - PVC skirts, cropped fuzzy sweaters, and velvet minis.
I am a feminist - I just think the label reflects my beliefs - but, you know, we say 'Rookie' is a website for teenage girls, not a feminist website for teenage girls. That's not because I'm not proud to call myself a feminist, but when you're calling attention to a project, you can very easily be pigeonholed by choosing certain identifiers.
With acting, I felt like I had a lot to prove because I didn't study it; I didn't work my way up in a traditional sense.
