Rowan Blanchard is only 15 but she is more mature than me, an actual adult. Now, teenage girls should never, ever be underestimated, (shout-out to Harry Styles for our latest favorite quote on that matter), but Blanchard especially should be highlighted for her fascinating ability to be the most intelligent and inspiring person in a room — while also being too young to see an R-rated movie alone. She is about 38 different types of #goals, and she displayed them all in full force during her cover interview with Nylon. Basically, I want to be Rowan Blanchard when I grow up.
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From even the first god damn sentence, Blanchard is killing it, in terms of keeping up her status as the Gloria Steinem of her generation (a label she probably would deny, but it's necessary to place her among the ranks of the most widely-known feminists because that is an inevitable part of her future). The piece opens with Blanchard speaking at the Women's March in Los Angeles the day after Donald Trump's inauguration. She told a crowd of women of all ages: "We have been forced to know how to fight since day one. This is our advantage." Now with millennial activists like Blanchard on our side, it's a pretty good advantage.
And then there's this reprehensible anecdote which appears near the bottom of the long profile. It's skeevy and uncomfortable, but Blanchard's calm and centered response is just Most Blanchard Reaction Ever. Nylon writes: "A potbellied man approaching Social Security age walks by in the opposite direction. He loudly whispers a lewd comment to Blanchard. What happens next will be painfully familiar to every single woman alive. Blanchard continues talking, perhaps thinking I didn’t hear, or that, in any case, we shouldn’t let him win by derailing the conversation. She stops. 'See, that makes me feel sick right now,' she says. She turns around, her fists balled up, strangling a scream — the perfect insult — as the distance between us and him increases. 'Like, what the fuck is that? Why does somebody feel the need to do that?' she says, and slowly resumes walking. 'Please write about this.'"
So, yeah Blanchard has got 'it.' And 'it' will be the key ingredient to having women with strong, succinct voices teaching and guiding a new generation of women to the top of any skill, field, or conversation they want to dominate. You wouldn't expect all of these wise statements to come from a 15-year-old former Disney Channel star on Girl Meets World, which is exactly why a girl like her matters so much today.