September 14, 2010

Tavi slammed as "curvy" by The New Yorker

Tavi Gevinson, fourteen-year-old blogger (otherwise known as the Style Rookie) has been slammed as "curvy" by New Yorker writer Lizzie Widdicombe.

I don't have access to the full eight page article on The New Yorker, but from the abstract, I sense that Widdicombe is maybe sporting a little chip on her shoulder. Perhaps she had an akward journey through puberty and feels the need to take it out on someone who is blossiming through the otherwise generally un-easy period of developing life.

"She is tiny for her age, four feet ten, and looks shockingly prepubescent," Widdicombe said. Perhaps that's because she is pre-pubescent. I looked like a boy until just before I turned sixteen. I had narrow akward hips, broad bony shoulders and un-cordinated tooth-pick limbs to match. Then one morning it seemed I had woken up with hips or "love handles", my arms and legs were shapley and these two jiggly things had attached themselves to my chest. It's rare that one goes from pre-pubescent to pre-pubescent-amazonian without a few bumps in the road in between, and even rarer that the genetically blessed among us (models) skip this process all together.

Widdicombe is further quoted in the article commenting on Tavi's physique in one of her recent outfits. "The dress was sleveless," she said. "You could see that her figure had changed dramatically since the earliest days of her blog. She had become curvy."

No shit. The earliest days of her blog being that Tavi was eleven. Hello?! Eleven. Of course her body is going to change. What's with the tunnel vision? We know that in modelling, the shorter girls have to compensate with a thinner frame, but Tavi isn't a model, she's a blogger. An insightful, eloquent, precocious, whip-smart, level headed nice girl in an industry that eats nice girls for breakfast. Sure, there's the novelty of her age in ratio to her success, but please do keep in mind that Tavi isn't a daughter of a rocker, designer or art dealer. The surname printed on her birth cirfiticate didn't seal her fate as a Missoni, Jagger or Versace. Sure, Tavi is that one in a million, but regardless of her involvement in the fashion industry, is it right for girls as young as fourteen be labelled as curvy? I hardly think so.

As one commenter in an NY Mag article said, "girls have thrown up for a lot less".


image via: Style Rookie

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

pfffttt tavi is the furthest thing from curvy I have seen. She looks like a young girl because she is a young girl that just happens to be an incredibly talented writer and has a great eye for fashion.

Articles like that annoy me so much! Thanks for posting your response!!

Simone Rennard said...

What the hell? That is ludicrous. I actually can't believe someone would write that about a fourteen year old girl!

Anonymous said...

This is quite possibly one of the best responses i have ever read.

jessica said...

what the actual fuck.
this is ridiculous.
WHERE does this woman think she gets the right to comment or criticise this young blogger's body ?! she isn't a model, she doesn't need to worry about it.
these are the type of cases that influence (not cause, but influence) disordered eating and fuck up girls.

i am repulsed.

mikapoka said...

Hi, interesting post: I totally agree with previous comments, though.
Even New Yorker can make a faux pas.
Swear I'll be back, ciao!

J S said...

that is pretty ridiculous. that girl is like a twig. maybe when she wrote 'curvy' she just meant that Tavi has boobs now (as opposed to when she was 11 years old..). what's funny though is the fact that the woman who wrote that article is probably (or almost certainly) at least 20 - 40 kgs heavier than Tavi..

J S said...

that is pretty ridiculous. that girl is like a twig. maybe when she wrote 'curvy' she just meant that Tavi has boobs now (as opposed to when she was 11 years old..). what's funny though is the fact that the woman who wrote that article is probably (or almost certainly) at least 20 - 40 kgs heavier than Tavi..

Anonymous said...

First off ill admit that i havent read the article in full myself so i cant tell if the author is trying to insinuate that curves are actually a bad thing. however it appears that you are, how can you slam somebody by calling them curvy? if you buy into body fascists language that makes curvy into an insult you're letting them win. but i do applaud you sticking up for tavi its totally inappropiate to comment on her looks especially as a paid journalist, focus on her writing and on whats she has achieved. sorry this comment is anon im not a blogger