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Tavi: Phenom or Premature?

HOWARD MEGDAL: For those who would dismiss Tavi, the 13-year-old fashion blogger, I’d simply ask: why?

Her writing is sound. Her perspective often takes into account historical trends that affect fashion. Yes, she is getting access to shows that many other writers took years to access. But does this say anything other than the simple truth: the Internet has democratized people’s access to writers and writing, and vice versa.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: The seven year old from the overwhelmingly popular YouTube video ‘David After Dentist’ seems to be doing all right, but he could be one of the lucky ones.

AKIE BERMISS: I’m not sure I could disagree anymore vehemently with Howard. While I enjoy the novelty of Tavi’s blog and her perspective as a 13 year old. I don’t really care about the novelty of her blog and I seriously mistrust her perspective as a 13-year-old. To say that her writing is “sound” is to mislead the public. Her writing is certainly adequate: everything is spelled correctly, all the words mean what she thinks they mean, she’s got a penchant for humor (though it is that 13-year-old girl humor that is dependent on rabid repetition of the word “like” and such rampant superlative and hyperbole that everything begins to seem neon). That said, she’s not that great. I knew many kids who, at 13, we writing much better than that. And I knew a ton of girls who wrote about fashion almost exclusively.

In their diaries.

EMILY SAIDEL: No matter how many books she has read, she does not have either the lived experience or the education to support her blog as informed analysis. Yet, she is positioning herself (and being positioned) via her front row seats at fashion shows and her direct contact with designers as an analyst equal to fashion professionals.

Are Scrunchies the New Black?

Jillian Lovejoy Lowery: I hope that I will never wear a scrunchie again, but I can’t really be sure

Molly Schoemann: Just Say “NO!” to Formal Shorts.