I barely made the cut at #88, but it’s cool to be the only nonfiction author in the group!

Thanks, readers, for putting me on the map!

BOYS, Ya’ll! That’s what I talk about in the forthcoming Dear Teen Me Anthology, which I contributed to (with 69 other YA Authors).

Also, I fully endorse Marke Bieschke and Jo Whittemore’s messages, among others in the trailer, below:

Love a girl who owns her hustle:

When asked by Style.com about whether she’d be attending the fashion shows in Europe, Mz. Banks replied:

“I gotta job, girl! I’ll be at my own shows.”

(image Karl Walter/Getty Images  via billboard.com)

(photo via style.com)

THIS quote from Scott Schuman a.k.a. The Sartorialist in Elle magazine:

“Older European women are very difficult. Older women, in general, say no all the time. They’re just very vain. And girls who are pretty, who’ve always been pretty. Not models — like the prom queen. They’re like, ‘Oh my god my beauty is such a curse! Nooo!’ They’re not really into fashion, because they’ve always been pretty. It doesn’t happen very often, because they rarely dress well. They dress so-so, because they’ve always gotten attention whether they want it or not. But I almost always know those girl[s] are going to be like, ‘No! Not again!’”

[[VIA TheCut.com]]

Love her or hate her, how can you not be intrigued by the life and times of Lindsay Lohan?

Today, I give props to VJ4rawr for creating a mighty-morphin’ Lohan tribute that is part spooky Halloween vid, part PSA, part mesmerizing art piece.

Enjoy!

(via Dlisted)

We just love a girl who isn’t so all about boys that she just settles for meh in the relationship department.

This week, we salute Leighton Meester for practicing self-respect and not settling in Marie Claire’s April issue:

“I never had a boyfriend until I was 18. It’s nice, I guess – when you like them. But it isn’t the most important thing. I’m not sure I ever want to get married. The only time a relationship is good is when you really love them. I don’t want to hang out with some guy I just like.”

Image by Olly Moss

Anyone who has a heart loves Tavi Gevinson. Actually, even robots probably heart Tavi because she’s old-soul smart, brave and honest (which isn’t easy to pull off when you’re 15, 27, 46 or 105). So when she announced she was starting an online magazine for wallpapery teens, I got super psyched. Even though I was planning a teen magazine of my own, I submitted my ideas to her and my teenage hero Jane Pratt, thinking “hey, if they dig ‘em, I’ll just work with them and get paid too!”

I was stricken with submitter’s remorse as soon as I hit the send button; because deep down, I knew I should be executing these ideas myself. (I mean, I’ve only been wanting to launch a teen mag since I was, well, Tavi’s age.)  Luckily, Tavi and Jane rejected my shiz and I continued on building my site and stockpiling it with content for release later this year.

I’ve been pretty happy about the work I’ve been doing on my soon-to-be site until now that Tavi has released RookieMag into the world. Suddenly, I’m panic stricken. What if Tavi has similar features on her site or tweaks of my submitted concepts, making mine not-so unique?  I know this is silly, since I trust her integrity and that she wouldn’t use my work without using me too. And thankfully, her vision is different enough than mine.

There’s plenty of room on the web and in the world for RookieMag, my site, Hello Giggles, Heart of Gold Girls and lots of other teen-friendly sites that are popping up. I’m excited to add RookieMag to my daily reading diet and already love Tavi’s post on Getting Over Girl Hate. (PSA: Read it now if you haven’t already!)

What’s more, my little freakout serves as another lesson in trusting my gut. Whether it’s knowing the value in our IP, knowing when to get away from a downer of a person, or simply knowing when were full, we’ve got to trust what our minds and bodies are telling us; they’re always right. How’s that for some old-soul smarts?

Today I posted an article for style.MTV, which features five back-to-school hair and makeup looks and stunning my-summer-was-better-than-yours lies to go with. Fun!! Read it Here.

Barry McGee, Houston Street and the Bowery, New York, 2010, photo by Farzad Owrang.

After the LA MOCA opened its Art in the Streets exhibit in April, an LAPD sergeant in charge the department’s anti-tagging effort told the LA Times that tagging around the museum had risen, thanks, in part to the museum’s exhibition du jour.

“The exhibit kind of glorifies graffiti; It puts taggers on front street,” the sergeant said.

During the exhibit’s run, LAPD cracked down on area taggers, while inside the museum, more than 200,000  visited to see, well,  street art.

And companies are wasting no time capitalizing on its popularity. Graffiti-inspired designs have popped up on everything from tweezers, to flat irons to cocktail shakers to Hello Kitty makeup palettes. Meanwhile, artists practicing their work in the streets face misdemeanors and in some cases, felonies if caught doing their art.

The message is: it’s OK to admire the street art aesthetic, as long as it’s something you pay for.

The clear problem? This art form’s heart and soul is in the streets; graffiti, wheat pasting and stenciling  are ways for artists to beautify, engage in commentary and start dialogue within their communities (for free no less). The commercialization of an art form while upholding its criminalization feels very un-American.

As street art gains more acceptance in the art world and the real world, maybe its time we–the community members–change the rules of vandalism and make exceptions for artists who are gifting their communities with pro-bono artwork.

What would these new rules look like? How would we determine “art” from blight?

How can we preserve the guts and soul of the art form so artists like Banksy, Barry McGee and others don’t abandon the streets for galleries and auction houses, where a lover of their work has to pay millions for the privilege of seeing their art?