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Opinion: Why Are We Following Kid Tastemakers?
Filed under: Opinions
Fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson interviews people backstage during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Credit: Andrew H. Walker, Getty Images
A parade of precocious tastemakers have become famous for gaining huge adult followings, including:
- Tavi Gevinson, a 14-year-old fashion blogger from suburban Chicago, who has had designers in the U.S. and Europe hailing both her biting commentary and her out-there style sense;
- Jackson Murphy, an 11-year-old from upstate New York, who just won a local Emmy for his televised movie reviews and is being trumpeted as the next Roger Ebert; and
- Remy Mumby, a 10-year-old foodie from Lansing, Mich., star of a website where fans view and read about his encounters with unlikely delicacies like scorpions. He just signed a book deal.
All three kids are bright and entertaining, and have every right to share their opinions online or in videos. The question is: Why should any adults listen to them, or other youthful critics? There are plenty of film, food, and fashion writers out there who bring life experience and more fully-developed skills to the task. No knock on these youngsters, but on the merits, they can't compete with the pros.
I get why people tune into the kid critics: We all think it's charming when preteens can convincingly play roles from the adult world, including speaking and writing like adult movie critics or fashion mavens. They're novelties, and we can't take our eyes off them, any more than we can resist the stock-tip-swapping babies in those E*Trade commercials. But just as we wouldn't really invest our money based on the advice of toddlers, do we really want to get our movie or dining tips from 11-year-olds?
I don't. Preteens have their own tastes and it only takes an evening or two watching the programs they love on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel to realize that, as energetic as the networks' young performers may be, it's all been done before. If I'm going to look to a critic for guidance, I want it to be one who's also seen it all, who can identify new and fresh stories and voices. An 11-year-old just isn't up to the task -- the prince has no clothes.
It's inevitable that when these kids become a little older, and their audiences start to pay more attention to the content than the package it comes in, they may realize that the youngsters turn out not to have such unique voices after all. Until then, I hope the kids have great fun with their fame, earn some money, and have the courage to move on if they want to try something new. And I hope their parents can, too. Their moms and dads should realize that the confidence their kids are gaining from this early success in one field will stake them well in whatever they choose to do -- and not make them feel like it's the only thing they could ever do. That's not a message the kids are likely to get from their online followers.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 2)
8-25-2010 @ 2:32PM
candy whitehurst said...come on you know their parent are telling them what to do and say.they can't go out and buy it.
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8-25-2010 @ 2:23PM
John F.C. Taylor said...Sure. Why not have kids doing it? I don't pay attention to movie critics and don't care at all about high fashion. As for odd foods, I can see Andrew Zimmern if I need to see anyone eating anything out of the ordinary.
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8-25-2010 @ 4:00PM
wwinterraynes said...ADULTS LET KIDS RUN THE WORLD NOW. I LONG FOR THE DAYS WHEN YOUR PARENTS SAID NO AND A CHILD SAID YES SIR AND WENT AND PLAYED. THIS INDULGANCE IS ONE OF THE REASON WE HAVE 7 YEAR OLDS THAT ARE SEXUALLY ACTIVE. THEY DRESS LIKE ADULTS AND THEY ARE TREATED LIKE ADULTS AND IF IT ISN'T BROUGHT TO A SCREECHING HAULT THE PARENTS OF AMERICAN ARE GOING TO LIVE TO REGRET THEIR MISTAKES IN RAISING THEIR LITTLE DARLINGS
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8-25-2010 @ 4:07PM
amksinny said...Why are we (ADULTS) LETTING CHILDREN MAKE ANY DECISIONS. They are children. The adults should be making all the decisions. Wait a minute, I forgot the adults want to be the children and the adults want the children to be the adults. In my 67th year of life, this is what I see.
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8-25-2010 @ 4:13PM
A.D. said...These kids know nothing, are not entertaining and people who follow them are complete morons who are afraid of being deemed old. These kids are trying too hard to be clever or different, they are neither and their parents are trying too hard to cash in on them and idiots are falling for it.
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8-25-2010 @ 4:33PM
Renjii said...Frankly this article makes me irritated the further into it I read. All it shows is someone who thinks no one should listen to children and that children, in fewer words, are idiots compared to adults and not capable of having more experience than an adult in a given field.
A 10-year old child that has gone to shop class and built a C-02 racer knows more about tools, materials and chemicals than a 42-year old man who has never touched a tool more specific than a hammer or screwdriver.
A 10-year old child can potentially have more life experience and knowledge on a subject than a grown person. Being grown is entirely relative. In an age where teenagers are working on Masters degrees and pre-teens are performing opera before the Queen of England, I think suggesting we shouldn't listen to the opinions of children is about as ignorant as an 'adult' can get.
We should be more impressed with the intelligence, savvy, motivation and moxie of these kids and less concerned with how threatened some people apparently feel by children knowing more about anything than they do.
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8-25-2010 @ 4:55PM
Ruth said...An intelligent, talented child can have a lot of things that an adult doesn't have. Life experience is NOT one of them. You have to have lived, learned and had many, many experiences - good & bad, made mistakes, figured them out, mostly on your own, without the help of mommy & daddy, to get life experience. I'm not saying these children are not good at what they do, they don't have life-experience. Adults who drop everything to follow their advice are idiots. The children probably don't even expect that. Let go of the anger Renjii, children are children, let them be what they are, they'll be grown soon enough. You can never be a child again. Once you're grown that's it!
8-25-2010 @ 5:24PM
Jenni-Anne said...Thank you Renjii!!!! So many of these posts act like children are idiots just because they're children.
How do these people expect their children to grow into intelligent adults who can make decisions if they never let them make any decisions as a child?
8-25-2010 @ 5:43PM
darbar said...How in heaven's name can a 10 year old have more life experience than someone in their 20's and older? Are you serious, or are you a 10 year old yourself. There's no way on God's green earth that a 10 year old has established enough life experience to critique much of anything, except to what THEY like and dislike. And I would fashion to guess that the 10 year old's tastes will change 100 times before they reach adulthood.
8-25-2010 @ 6:08PM
LasVegasX said...It's just a fact, and you see it as much as I do, children are becoming more wise to life. Life experience means nothing, whether you're an adult or a kid, you can see more in one year than most other people see in their life. If you think it's not wise to listen to a child make an opinion, then you are a prude who is stuck on how adults should make all decisions and don't realize that the adults make poor choices. And keep in mind, children are not born ignorant or stupid, adults teach ignorance and stupidity to them. We all just need to get over the fact that kids are smart, and they always have been.
8-25-2010 @ 7:24PM
jessica said...I think that discouraging children from following a path to nurture their creativity is one of the worst things a parent can do. Do children have the life experience like an adult? No. Does that mean that they should be discouraged from finding a creative outlet? No. Children can provide an outlook that is very rare to get from an adult because they still have the imagination of--you guessed it--a child. I draw the line where parents push and push to get their child to fight for fame. It's one thing to make your child continue their violin lessons and keep them from quitting. It's quite another to push them into fame because when they crash, they crash hard. It's important for the parents of these children to make them see the reality while not discouraging their creativity. Should we drop everything and hang on their every word? No. In fact, you shouldn't do that for adults either. Make your own decisions.
8-25-2010 @ 5:10PM
chckpope said...Children should be seen and not heard. Their parents should be arrested for child abuse, making their kids grow up before they get a chance to be kids. Look at the toll acting careers have taken on the youth, Lindsay Lohan is a perfect example. When will they learn?
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8-25-2010 @ 5:35PM
Squiggles said...Why so negative, people? Are you afraid that an 11 year-old might upstage you or be smarter than you? The days when children were supposed to be seen but not heard are long over, and furthermore, if you ever came off your high horse and listened to your children, you might actually learn something about your child that you never knew before.
So a 14 year-old girl loves fashion and writes about it, an 11 year-old boy loves movies and can actually distinguish between a good one and a trashy one, and a 10 year-old boy is a foodie. Exactly what is wrong with that? Right now they're hobbies they're pursuing, nothing more. Some years down the road they might morph into actual careers. In any case what those kids are doing is a thousand times better than sitting on the couch all day watching TV and playing video games, but I guess, you naysayers would prefer them to do that.
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8-25-2010 @ 6:03PM
Martha Underwood said...I have worked with children in some capacity all my life. Children do not have the life experiences adults have; however, they have much to say to us. Their limited life experiences are just as valuable as an adults. When I worked in the church, I was often told how great it was to have somenone working with the youth since they are the future church. Whenever, I could I always emphasized that the children and teens are the church now. They deserve to be treated with respect and where appropriate included in church activities, even when it comes to council or vestry meetings. We do need to be careful about those bodies that make decisions and including children because I have been in some churches where the adults in power do not act like the Christians they purport themselves to be. Children have a lot to say to us if we adults would only open up and listen.
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8-26-2010 @ 8:25PM
Ama said...All of you need to realize that these kids have founf their passion early in life. Theyy did not mean to make the world follow them, but they did.
And they d have more experience. Let me put iy this way. If you start competitive swim when you're 5 you will be better than someone who is 20 and just started like 3 years ago. Why? Because by the time you hate that age you would have gained more knowledge than most 20 year olds. And yes they have more experience as 10 and 11 year olds because the world adores them and throws oppurtunities at their feet. By the time Tavi is 20 she will have her own line, own fashion mag in all major countries. Why? Because she now has 30 year old Japanese, French British friends who practically own fashion in their country. She will be given oppurtunities that you all could never dream of!
If you're all so angry then why didint you start somthing you loved when you where young?
Sorry if I sound like a ranting maniac. But I want this idea to get across.
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8-25-2010 @ 6:28PM
Angiebaby said...Now, let me see.... We've made kids the masters of our homes and demoted parents to servants. We've made kids the schoolmasters and relegated teachers to be their minions. Why the hell would we NOT make them our tastemasters? That does seem like the next logical step.
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8-25-2010 @ 6:43PM
Eryn said..."No knock on the youngsters"? Who exactly does Gary Drevitch think he's fooling by prefacing an exhaustive, sneering, ageist rant with that paltry lip service? These three individuals are young, but that doesn't mean that their opinions aren't valid, that their experiences are so minimal they're not worthy of our consideration, or that their perspective is a gimmick and a sideshow curiosity for no other reason than--wait for it---they're young.
They are not toddlers (as one logical fallacy tried to compare them to in an analogy); they are young adults with developed cognitive functions, experiences to draw on, and the skill and charisma to articulate their opinions experiences in a way that is both refreshing and entertaining. They are a fashionista, critic, and foodie who have gained attention in a world and fields dominated by adults precisely because they are good at what they do. Every adult begins life as a child, to be so dismissive of a stage of life that he himself experienced reveals a rather heart-wrenching sense of ignorance and lack of self-awareness.
These children show greater intelligence and skill at their vocations than an adult who should know better--based on his own claims that an adult would have greater life experiences--therefore, he would know what journalistic integrity and the importance of unbiased delivery means. If this article was merely an ill-thought out attempt to sneer at children who have the courage and intelligence to voice their opinions with both flair and skill in a world where their peers are united by common interests, if not age, then I merely feel sorry for his deliberate ignorance and desire to tear them down. If on the other hand, he wrote this article with full knowledge that he threw journalistic integrity out the window, along with his credibility, and deliberately embarked on a campaign to trivialize these unique individuals with every flawed tool at his disposal, then there is no other response but the deepest contempt.
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8-25-2010 @ 6:53PM
Eric said...Wow, Gary Drevitch, bitter much? So what, some advanced kids are having a moment in the spotlight talking about things they love. Why does this make you so mad you had to write an article on it? I bet it's probably because you are miserable and bitter and secretly envy and resent these kids. You could've just as easily made an article spotlighting them with a note of "this kid's a good critic but obviously he's not Roger Ebert" instead of just lambasting them. Geez.
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8-25-2010 @ 7:20PM
preciousplants said...Pardon me, but you need to grow up and find something else that's worth complaining about. Don't bicker just because today's youth has more at their fingertips than children of the past. You think it's bad that they know what cartoon they like after seeing it twice but I bet as a child you knew right away when you liked something. Encourage them. Please! That's all we can do. What you're doing is not constructive in any way.
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8-25-2010 @ 7:32PM
Jim said...Sorry Mr. Dravitch, but it is you that is the emperor without clothes.
Kids tend to tell it like it is. They don't have some ivory tower view of the the world. Movie critics, the adult brand, tend to not know their hind quarters from a hole in the ground. If that weren't true ther wouldn't be so many box office disasters that got rave reviews and mega-hits the critics hated. And as far as food goes, a kid that would actually try scorpion? More courage than I've got, for sure. Remember "novelle cousine"? Loved by the critics, but sank with real people who didn't want to pay a small forturne for nickle sized portions just to see and be seen at some critically acclaimed dive of a resturant. As for fashion. Please. Real people see that latest fashion fads that come down the catwalks of "critically acclaimed"
designers and realize those rediculous get-ups aren't made to be worn by real people. Kids know that too and they aren't afraid to say so. Get a life Mr. Drevitch, and a new career whle you're at it. As a critic, you don't know what your're talking about.
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