I’m a fan of 14-year-old Rowan Blanchard. She’s rather precocious, intelligent and interesting. In the past few months, Rowan has given an impressive critique of how “squad goals” are quite damaging, and most recently, Rowan came out as “queer” (her word) because even though she has only liked boys in her 14 years of life, she wants to keep her life open to many possibilities. In the latest edition of Wonderland, Rowan talks about social media, the hate she got for coming out as queer, plus how she feels “sorry not sorry” about douchebags.

Her “Sorry Not Sorry” essay: “I think I felt a need to write that piece because I was sick of apologising for things that I really shouldn’t be sorry for. I see it now with my young sister and it scares me because I know at that age, when I was 12, I would literally spend 45 minutes putting on a whole face of make-up, when I really didn’t want to, but because I genuinely felt that if somebody saw me with my dark eye circles or a blackhead, that I’d risk offending them. You are supposed to say ‘I’m sorry’ for things that you’re not sorry for, especially to men.”

On social media: “I think social media is such a tool for people in my age group and such a tool for girls particularly… I feel like that’s where I started finding things that affected me, particularly politics. I learned through social media that we often talk about America like it’s a totally equal place, but that’s not always the case. You think certain things happen in third-world countries or places that are really far away from where you live, but through social media I realised that things are happening right in front of me. The thing that’s tough about it is that you’re subject to everybody else’s opinions when you didn’t necessarily ask for that. The downside to social media is it’s another place for girls to be made fun of and another way for girls to be degraded; the upside is that it’s also a way for girls — especially girls of colour, for example — to speak out and to take back some control.”

The backlash she faced over identifying as queer: “I’m okay with it now, but I still realise that I was allowing people to comment on something that’s very personal. The first day I tweeted about it, it was definitely scary to see people commenting about things that literally have nothing to do with them.”

She wants girls to stop blaming themselves: “I see that a lot of girls will thank me and be like: ‘I wanna change the world, but I don’t have a platform…’ I think if there was one thing that I want, it’s less self-blame among girls for not being able to ‘write a show about it’ or ‘write a movie about it’ or ‘write an essay about it’. When you’re a girl all these things are against you, so just existing is a form of protest. You don’t have to do more than that; all the other stuff is extra.”

[From Wonderland]

One of the reasons I like Rowan so much is because at 14, she obviously still has some growing to do intellectually, but she’s got a great head start. She understands intersectional feminism better than most women twice her age, or three times her age or more. I also love the point she makes about some women/girls feeling guilty about wanting to do more, be more engaged, be more active, but that “just existing is a form of protest.” It’s true.

The one qualm I have with this whole thing is the qualm I have with a lot of young people, especially teenagers: they think social media is the world, and it’s just not. It’s just social media. Don’t take it so seriously, don’t live on Instagram, and don’t confuse your Instagram followers for the world at large. I also side-eye the “it was definitely scary to see people commenting about things that literally have nothing to do with them” comment because… well, she put it out there, on Twitter. Obviously, she’s a 14-year-old young woman and I’m not saying she “deserved” to be criticized, but it’s too cute by half to assume a 14-year-old self-identifying as queer on Twitter won’t get a reaction.

your girl by @petrafcollins 4 @wonderlandmag

A photo posted by Rowan Blanchard (@rowanblanchard) on Mar 6, 2016 at 5:56pm PST

Photos courtesy of WENN, Instagram.