Ask a Grown Person

When I was a teenager, I read Sassy magazine. Oh, how I wish I would have grown up in the Age of the Internet. Rookie magazine, what Sassy would have been as an online 'zine if written by the readers instead of adults, would have made me a much more well-adjusted teenager, because I would have known that there were other people out there who thought differently, and I wouldn't have felt so out of place. And guess what: I follow Rookie on Facebook and often read their pieces, including Ask a Grown Man and Ask a Grown Woman, because I may be a grown woman myself, but I think we all still have insecure teenage selves hidden deep inside, and that makes Rookie relevant no matter how old we get. If you have young people in your life, share Rookie with them and let them know that you're never too old to watch Ira Glass make balloon animals while giving love advice. The rest of the content is also superb and shows just how far we have come as a society that teenagers not only talk about previously taboo topics but also accept everyone's gender/racial/sexual/cultural identity differences without question. Women of my mother's generation set the gender equity bar such that although women may still struggle in some areas, those in my generation never questioned whether women could do anything that men can do. I like to think that my generation is setting the cultural bar such that the next generation (i.e., Rookie readers) will never question their worthiness or capabilities across gender, sexual, racial, or any other lines. That's encouraging.