Gevinson - Rookie on love: 45 voices on romance, friendship, and self-care

Rookie is an online magazine made by and for teenagers and their cohorts of any age. I founded it in 2011, when I was a sophomore in high school, because I couldnt find a teen magazine that respected its readers intelligence and had actual teens writing for it. In the time since, Rookie readers have made themselves known through our online community, at live events, and by starting their own zines, blogs, bands, clubs, and other manifestations of their creativity and brilliance. Wed always hoped to commemorate the magic all our contributors had made for RookieMag.com, so we published four anthologiesone for each year of high schoolknown as the Rookie Yearbooks. But we wanted to keep going, and we wanted to commission and publish new work that wouldnt live anywhere else, not even on the internet. We wanted to focus on a single subject, rather than a period of time. We wanted to see the variety of ways in which Rookie writers and artists, Rookie heroes we dreamed of working with, and Rookie readers who are on their way to becoming all of the above, would respond to the same prompt. We wanted a subject that would be totes chill, v. simple, and easy to understand. So we went with Love.

Behold: the next iteration of Rookie in print, featuring all-new essays, comics, and poetry by teens of all ages. Initially, I thought wed commission pieces to check the box for every possible manifestation of this mysterious emotion: crushes, unrequited love, long-term, short-lived, long-distance, hookups, breakups, et cetera. Maybe wed sequence them according to the timeline of a stereotypical relationship, from attraction to union to separation. The verdict would be in, finally. The meaning of love, captured in these pages.

But like anything worth doing or feeling, love is impossible to explain. Like anything in real life and not a book or movie or Love Story by Taylor Swift or Love Story by Mariah Carey or Love Story (You and Me) by Randy Newman, love doesnt always unfold according to a narrative structure. Plus, ending the book with a bunch of breakups felt bleak. What about the next part, where you find how great it is to be alone? And the part after that, where you meet someone else and create something new with them? Or where you choose to not be in a romantic relationship, or casually date, or have sex with whomever you want? Also, what about the love that persists all around us regardless of what we do or dont have going on romantically? The love you feel when working on something that really lights you up, or taking in a piece of art that seems to read your mind, or discovering a really good book (cough, fart)? The people who make your life feel so full that The One might actually be a multi-headed mutant? What about those days where youre just like, I cant believe that Im not only not depressed out of my mind, but that I also actually feel... in love with the world around me?!!?! Or when youre like, Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinions starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I dont see that. [... ] If you look for it, Ive got a sneaky feeling youll find that love actually is all around.

OK, that was Hugh Grants monologue from the beginning of Love Actually, but sometimes trying to write about love makes you sound like that!! And honestly, the thesis of that movie, however cheesy, is not wrong; if anything, the rest of the script falls short of that expansive claim. Love is all around, but its holding place is not always another person. Sometimes you find the best companion in yourself, or the fun of worshipping a teen idol, or the challenge of trying to understand love in its various forms. Just that attempt. The curiosity. Thats how I felt, working on this book. And, coming to its end, I feel pretty satisfied with the idea that love is a force that takes different forms, that can be more present in the feeling of writing than in a relationship, in memories or fantasies, in a conversation with an internet friend, in the way your dog waits for you to come home.

So, I am proposing a sequel to Love Actually, called Love ActuallyNo, But Actually, where everyone plays someone from Rookie on Love: Emma Thompson as Florence Welchs songwriting process (pg. 155), Bill Nighy as the beauty standards Alessia Cara calls into question (pg. 175), Chiwetel Ejiofor as Emma Straubs favorite books (pg. 57), Keira Knightley as the lion in Etgar Kerets short story (pg. 13), Colin Firth as Mitski Miyawakis musical career (pg. 83), Liam Neeson as Marlo Thomass acting coach (pg. 167), Laura Linney as Montgomery Clift in Hilton Alss tribute to the screen icon (pg. 191), January Jones as the love letters that taught Janet Mock she was a writer (pg. 3), Alan Rickman as the Gchat about YA romance between John Green and Rainbow Rowell (pg. 61), Rowan Atkinson as Gabourey Sidibes self-described Ho Phase (pg. 67)... I mean, what a cast! No wonder its a classic!

Prepare to be blown away by the poetry by Rookie readers, interviews and conversations, how-tos and direct advice, lyrical essays and timelines, and more questions than answers. I remain bowled over by every contribution, the sheer creativity and range in these interpretations of the most-written-about subject ever. Of course, though. Thats what you get when youre just like: I love your writing. Will you write about something that you love, too?

And if anyone wants to produce a super-convoluted sequel to a beloved rom-com Christmas movie and obscure the moneymaking faces of at least ten international movie stars with giant objects-as-costumes, as in a school play, please get in touch!

Love (I say it in every Editors Letter but now I extra-mean it),

Tavi

POSTCARDS FROM APOLLO 6

By Lena Blackmon

your hand rests on the waist of my sunflower sundress.

we waltz in a physics classroom.

there is sunlight inside of us:

it makes us graceful,

(as we tend to be, with our planetary bodies and gravitational attraction)

kepler. and then the acceleration

away from each other.

drifting apart, but not in a

catastrophic way. like if apollo 6 floated down

instead of crashed.