So I found out last night that Rookie Magazine is coming to an end...

Ever since I came across Rookie magazine during my first semester in university it has been an important part in my life. I would guess the average readership age of the magazine is around 14-19. I wish I came across it sooner in my youth. But then again, until I came to university I never really thought about girlhood and the transition to womanhood.

I would say I had an interesting middle school and high school experience. I went to an all-girls school, wore a uniform practically the whole time, didn't have a lot of friends, and had no social media account until roughly the year of high school. I had no idea what binge-watching Netflix was, why people watched Grey's Anatomy during class, didn't understand what hashtags were or why everyone was obsessed with the snapchat dog filters. The only thing I could connect with people was on how amazing One Direction is, but I only started to become a fan during their fourth album so was a little late in the game for that as well. My point is, I couldn't connect with my generation and never felt the need to understand what growing up on social media was like. However in a strange way, this led to me feeling like I was the "strange kid".

So you might be wondering, what the hell did you do with your time if you weren't on social media? First I participated in a ridiculous number of extracurricular activities and I played a lot of badminton. I listened to a lot of One Direction; and wrote a lot of music in attemps to meet Harry Styles one day. I now have about a thousand fully completed songs and an even larger number of shorter musical scraps and poetry journals, sitting on my bedroom shelf. I only realized this as I was going through my room this summer.

I was a really insecure teenager growing up and I hid it really well. It's hard to realize that you're insecure as you're growing up because 1) you don't know what insecurities are and are oblivious of the norms and gender expectations placed on you and 2) you're a kid, you take things as they are and turn the situation around into a positive one. You accept what's around you and you try to make sense of it the best you can, even if it's awful. There's this unclear line between insecurity and ignorance.

To be honest, I don't know if I would categorize my teenage years as "good" or "bad" because although I now see a lot of the oppressive aspects very clearly, I didn't see it that way when I was growing up so wasn't purely unhappy. My last year of high school was also amazing and so I don't know if at times I'm reflecting accurately on my overall high school experience. There's this book "The Sense of an Ending" and I honestly think I'm experiencing exactly what Tony does in that book.

I don't like to ponder on the past too much but when I do look back at it once in a while. I recently was thinking back to high school as I was reading Tavi Genivson's last post for why she was ending Rookie magazine. It made me look back at the down at road that I've come down. I am grateful that I took the Rookie road.

I came across Rookie a bit late my teen years. In a way, I think I went through the whole "high-school experience thing", during my first semester of university and it was a relevant time to come across Rookie magazine. It may sound weird but the magazine reminded me that I'm still a kid and that I will forever have some of that child spirit within me; just because I am older doesn't mean I will begin to find or get used to the blank lecture halls. I think kids are happy not just because they are ignorant, but they get to be pulled in little wooden wagons by their parents while wrapped in their favorite blanket. They get candy cane hot chocolate with pink and green marshmallows. They get to dress up in costumes that they handmade and painted with friends on a friday night and wear it for Halloween. They get to draw whatever they want with any colour they choose. They are not restricted in movement, creativity, or have to worry about how to compose themselves.

Rookie also taught me who good role models are, to be kinder to myself, and how to find the things I enjoy. It was a place where I could read authentic voices and not feel societal pressures. It made me critical of the media I consumed and I also love that its advice posts were filled with themes of acceptance to fail, love, care, and feel safe. I began to love their colourful sketch posts and drawings and the scrap-booking printouts. I started to add colourful sweaters to my wardrobe and put art on my walls. I experimented with different makeup designs and began to see that my changing self was not a bad thing. Rookie reopened my eyes to colour, art, drawing, water-colouring, filming, writing music, playing music, and reading good books. It brought me back to the things I loved as a child and allowed me to embrace it.

I think for young teenage girls, it's really hard to find a place to grow up and gain a sense of identity through social media. Young girls are from the start always surrounded and learning in materialistic environments. From the toys we grow up with to the female characters in all the shows we watch to this present day, there are a lot of strong consumerist, materialistic, and stereotypical aspects entangled with womanhood. There's so much bias and content that strengthens stereotypes and gender norms that we internalize.

Overall, social media is a very limited medium in terms of expressing identity and focuses mainly on visual identity which is in no way deep or real. I think a lot of people take a lot of unnecessary time in making their accounts as "true" as possible. Social media can never be a visual reflection of who we are.

The way that I've come to see my instagram account is that it's like an email that you're sending to every single one of your contacts but on text, you're sending an image. And so when I post on instagram I think, what picture would I send out in a mass email to my friends to let them know how I'm doing? I don't believe it's possible for your account to be a reflection of yourself, it's more a communication tool for me. It's important to be critical in how much time we spend on it, because as Rookie magazine has taught me, kids/people are happy because of things in real life, like art or spending time with friends. In real life, we're less restricted to dance, vocalize, speak, feel, and create unlike online.

On a final note, Rookie magazine connected me to female musicians, poets, photographers, and bloggers that are my true role models. Off the top of my head I found out about Tavi Gevinson, Princess Nokia, Rupi Kaur, Petra Collins, and more. These women taught me a lot about accepting my hobbies and embracing my strange music ideas. There's no one right way to grow up and express yourself. Rookie provided me with confirmations that I was enough. You helped draw the curtains on my fears and uncover my real personality.

There is no right or wrong way, there's just your way. You don't have to shave your legs to be a women or be afraid of having a cute mustache. You can love bras, hate bras, be okay with bras and be a contradiction of stereotypes. You can go to the men's section buy clothes and also wear pink, lacy dresses. You helped me not take things too seriously, to accept things by their nature. I fell in love with my hobbies again and became unafraid of the child within me. To grow up no longer had a time limit.

Thank you.