Girl Talk: Teen Vogue Summit
On December 1st and 2nd of 2017 I attended the first ever “Teen Vogue Summit” in Los Angeles, California. After submitting three responses to three different short answer prompts, I was one of 50 chosen to be sponsored to attend this summit out of 450 submissions nationwide.
I first learned about the summit from the editor in chief of Teen Vogue, Elaine Welteroth and her Instagram account. On the due date of submissions, I decided to turn in my submission. I was extremely surprised and humbled to receive an email a month after I submitted stating the Teen Vogue would like to sponsor my trip to the event.
Throughout 2017, the magazine has been transformed from your typical “teen girl” magazine to an inclusive publication that covers mature stories from all different aspects on the pop culture spectrum. They have recently produced stories highlighting LGBTQ+ sex education, sexual harassment, and female empowerment. Not only does the magazine highlight these topics, but they also encourage their readers to become active within their communities.
According to the Teen Vogue website, the summit was “organized to inspire, encourage and connect a new generation of activists, creators and innovators, providing them with the insights and tools to change the world”, and as an attendee, I completely validate this statement.
Before the event occurred, all attendees were instructed to choose certain “tracks” and guest speakers they wanted to engage in and listen to. On the first day of the summit, there were multiple different tracks labeled based off of you interests. Attendees could choose between “creator”, “activist”, or “innovator”, and based off of your preference, you were given specific tracks referred to as “@Werk Immersions”.
The first day, I had the opportunity to visit three completely different companies; Omaze, Sundance Institute and 72andsunny. Although different, all three companies have programs in place to help contribute and empower a greater community.
The second day of the summit was spent at the headquarters of the advertising company 72andsunny. This day was dedicated to keynote speakers such as Hillary Clinton, Ava DuVernay, Maxine Waters, Yara Shahidi, and Rowan Blanchard. After the keynote speakers’ attendees had the option to engage in intimate “breakaway” session to listen to active members of their community talk about their lives.
As said best by the editor in chief of the magazine, Elaine Welteroth, a major point emphasized throughout the summit was to teach young women how “to turn your passion into a paycheck”. Throughout the event I met amazing young women doing amazing things.
In addition to the amazing business opportunities offered throughout the event, there were so many other life lessons taught. It is so important for young women to hear about success stories from other young women in order to “materialize” success. Throughout my entire experience I was exposed to hundreds of people openly having conversations about mental health, menstruation, empowerment, and representation.
Despite the current events occuring throughout the world at the moment it was increasingly impactful to be exposed to a climate that is so extremely supportive and educated. After engaging with females from all different backgrounds, ages, and identities I have renewed hope for women in the coming years.
It is extremely important for major companies and journalists to support young women and publicize articles that give voices to those that have been left unheard for too long. I greatly appreciate Teen Vogue engaging in hard conversations and shining a light on real issues in the real world.
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Abbey Malbon is in 11th grade and is a spotlight writer. She is involved with Literary Magazine, Best Buddies and Fresh Connect. She spends her free time...
Caleb Berry, a proud patriot • Jan 10, 2018 at 7:58 pm
To start, I want to say its not bad to support things you truly believe, its bad to truly believe things a singular group believes. Believe half of what you see, and nothing that you here. Speak for yourself, not for Teen Vogue, not for Fox, not for CNN, not for Breitbart, and not for Buzzfeed. Never Buzzfeed.
As for what I think? Vogue is one of those “news” websites that’s not what it seems. Editors at Vogue use fair language to get their point across, but their ideas will almost always align with Modern Leftist/Liberal Ideology which tells me more than enough about what they try and do. Vogue likes to hype young readers to believe Vogue’s idea of what being socially aware is. I don’t like news that likes to try and conform people. It makes me fear of whats to come of this nation as I grow into an adult. There are a plethora of news websites that like to conform people, then there are those that like to inform. Inform not to conform is something I believe more than conforming news. I know someone is going to reply with “all news sites try to conform”. This isn’t true. All news likes like to advertise, but not all of them like to conform. There are very distinct differences.
To move onto Vogue as a topic, I would like to state that they’re very biased. With their main audience being young women, they like to appeal to primarily things that most young women will agree with. Sounds normal, except at that point you cant trust it, when you sway things a little bit, or use good vocab to try and make people understand THEIR idea of an event, that’s when it cant be trusted. After doing some data compiling on Vogue I also found that some of the things they talk about I’ve already debunked in previous girl talk articles. An example I’ll use will be in their new editorial on Hillary Clinton collaborating with chief editor, Elaine Welteroth.
I would very much like to state how much nonsense is happening in the editorial. The word nonsense in this context literally means non-sense or without sense. Just dipping into the introduction I read how young women were becoming active and changing society, with examples being “Raising awareness about child marriage in Yemen and sex trafficking in Cambodia”, yet the most sexual atrocities occur on a massive scale in countries that primarily believe in Islam, but of course, if either Hillary or Elaine said something critical about Islam, they would be racist, so better yet they ignore it instead.
Then They talk about how women should be “demanding diversity in books and movies”. I personally don’t agree with this on a full scale. It conforms to the ideals of political correctness, and if movie producers don’t include all different kinds of people, they’re racist, misogynistic, or homophobic. This doesn’t make sense because realistically not all authors or producers will change characters or plots just because of the “New World” societal standards and they shouldn’t, or otherwise it’s censorship. Just like when a new movie, Dunkirk, was unfairly judged because they used a white straight male cast. Last time I checked Dunkirk was based on a true story, and WWII had a lot of white straight male people that fought it. To make it have characters from all Racial and sexual (gender) backgrounds is without sense, or nonsense. This editorial I read was one of many that conformed to Modern Leftist/Liberal Ideology or MLLI, I was talking about earlier.
MLLI is clearly shown through Metea Media as well, and its sad to know that our own source of media at Metea, a school that will be pushing out people into life as adults, Is so biased itself to the point that less and less free thinkers exist in our school. As for anyone who calls me a keyboard warrior, know that I usually sit in one of the comfy chairs in the library before first hour, if you agree, disagree, or simply want to talk to me, please do.
If you do end up reading this Abbey, please understand I really do respect you for having strong opinions on Metea Media, I am just concerned that I’ll never be able to share mine because of the standards of our education system and what I happen to believe. Maybe Metea will be able to change that fact?
darkstripe • Jan 11, 2018 at 11:02 am
Honestly even though I myself am a liberal this is a pretty well-said post. Balance is always needed with both the left and the right. One thing I think would help Metea Media is if they had opinion articles about the same thing written from different perspectives- it is always good to read an opinion different from your own, it can really open your eyes sometimes. If Metea Media angled more towards more debated and controversial issues from all sorts of angles and perspectives it’d be better imo.
I do think Metea Media is getting more serious than they were, which is good, but having multiple perspectives would make it not seem as biased towards the left side.
прямой белый самец • Jan 11, 2018 at 12:15 pm
very concise my comrade. all of this is true and teen vogue can be very unreliable due to their views and how to be “correct” and “not racist”. the biggest problem for me is that people aren’t saying the truth because they may seem sexist or racist and when the truth is suppressed, lies take over and that’s what a lot of this news outlets are doing. like if I said there are two genders and that’s biological or feminism isn’t needed in America but rather other places, I would be labeled all sorts of things I’m not, and that intolerance and unchecked name calling is the driving force of a lot of problems in America. being called what you actually are is a way to get on the right foot
The Woman • Jan 11, 2018 at 12:32 pm
I agree with your opinions, but you can write for this webpage (I hope you do!). You can apply for the Newspaper Journalism class. Since it is an elective I won’t join simply because I have other interests and not too passionate about writing.
I would also like to add on to your statement on diversity.
Racial diversity doesn’t matter. Why? Because we look past race, it doesn’t make us who we are. The only diversity that matters is the diversity in thought, ideas, opinions, and perspectives.
If we do not remember this, then we going to have something similar to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where they claimed that they were ‘liberating’ the people by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society. This then resulted in people being publicly humiliated, imprisoned, tortured, forced into hard labor, harassed, seized property, and sometimes execution. They were punished simply because they had a different opinion.
We already see some similar comparisons where people are losing their jobs and are publically humiliated on social media.
I hope our country will not fall for the same trap that my father left.
Caleb Berry, a proud patriot • Jan 18, 2018 at 12:48 pm
just realized that I spelled “hear” wrong.