Teen Vogue

Criticizing 2020 Candidates Must Be Part of the Primary Process

In this op-ed, writer Phillip Henry examines why criticizing candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries is so important.

Presidential election cycles have always been a pretty contentious and stressful time for many of us. After all, choosing the next “leader of the free world” is pretty high stakes and should be treated as such. But since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, many in the U.S. (and most 2016 voters, considering he lost the popular vote) have felt the pressure to ensure, above all else, that he doesn’t get reelected for a second term. It is, to many, the most significant moral imperative of the next 15 months, and can be all-consuming on the way to voting again in November 2020.

Since Democratic candidates put their hats in the ring for a chance to be the next president of the United States, we have examined their values, policies, and visions for a better America. When we as voters decide on a candidate we think can win, it often becomes our mission (as supporters) to rally others to back our candidate. Often the way we engage in that is not just by highlighting our favorite’s accomplishments, but by critiquing the proposals, voting histories, and resumés of other candidates (though we should do the same with our own candidate as well).

The truth is that no single candidate is going to represent the values and ideals of all people perfectly. They are all flawed, and their past isn’t necessarily an indictment of their future, but it is important that we criticize and analyze all of the candidates’ shortcomings and our concerns about them. That way we can have confidence in their abilities as leaders and see their vulnerabilities ahead of what’s sure to be a bitter general election. It is, in a way, the most democratic and productive thing we can do.

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What Are My Rights During an ICE Raid?

1. Don’t Open the Door — ICE can’t enter your home without a warrant signed by a judge.

2. Ask to Speak to a Lawyer — The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) both advise asking for a lawyer before you speak to ICE. If you're at risk, try to speak with an attorney as soon as possible. If you need help finding an immigration attorney in your area, there are resources online, including the National Lawyers Guild National Immigration Project, which has state-by-state listings (though not all 50 states have attorneys included). 

3. Remain Silent or Tell ICE You Wish to Do So — You have the right to remain silent in any interaction with an ICE agent, and you can tell them so. What you say can be used against you in immigration court or deportation proceedings.

4. Don’t Sign Anything — Unless you’ve already spoken to a lawyer who advises it, the NILC and ACLU say you shouldn’t sign any documents ICE asks you to.

5. Don’t Lie or Provide False Documents — Lying to ICE agents can be dangerous.

6. Don’t Flee or Resist Arrest — If you run from ICE, the results can be deadly not just legally dangerous. People who help an immigrant escape ICE can be charged with things like obstruction of justice by the Department of Justice. People who attempt to physically stop an arrest can also be charged with resisting a public officer.

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Bernie Sanders: Gen Z Is “a Generation of Tolerance and Decency”

In case you hadn't heard, Bernie Sanders is running for president again. The independent senator from Vermont and 2016 wrench in the Democratic Party machine has been hitting the 2020 campaign trail hard, trying to hold a solid position in second place across several dozen polls, with Joe Biden out ahead of him and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harrishot on his heels. Sanders tells Teen Vogue his campaign intends to win the Democratic primary and defeat “the most dangerous president in American history.”

The democratic socialist is pleased to see that many of his policy views deemed too “radical” in his 2016 primary run are becoming debate-stage topics. Over the last four years, he’s watched ideas he championed then (Medicare for All, tuition-free college, and more) become mainstream liberal politics even as he remains a leader on these issues and a crusader against Wall Street and the corporate health care system.

It is strange to think that Sanders, a man who has been in Congress as long as I’ve been alive, represents such vocal resistance to the very system he’s so long been a part of. But the presidential candidate’s call for a “working-class revolution” (specifically, a political revolution) feels like more than just rhetoric when proposals like eliminating all student loan debt are on the table.

Listening to Sanders, you get the sense that he feels a duty to save this country and this planet and that being a part of the system is a necessary condition for that moral obligation.

Sanders visited the Teen Vogue offices this week, where he discussed some of his 2020 competitors, how to combat an impending sense of nihilism about our shared future, and what’s so special about this moment’s political superstar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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For Pulse Shooting Survivor Stephanie Kersten, Dance Is a Source of Healing

To Stephanie Kersten, dancing is about feeling alive.

It’s about getting lost and getting found — a lifeline, a pulse of energy, a reminder of all the positive energy in the world. She went dancing the night of June 11, 2016, and was at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando around 2:00 a.m. on June 12 when a mass shooting occurred there and transformed the rainbow community forever.

Stephanie was dancing long before that night, and she’s still dancing today. To Stephanie, dancing is more than an art form; it’s movement in search of the stuff that galaxies are made of: power, passion, and resilience in the face of fear.

“When it comes to dance, I’m passionate about how it can be a part of your life forever,” Stephanie tells Teen Vogue, three years after that deadly night. “It allows you to express yourself; to free yourself.”

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Only One Woman of Color Has Directed an Animated Movie in the Past 12 Years

In recent years, television and film animation have made headlines for progress in inclusive storylines, including historic same-sex relationships and plus-size superheroes. Unfortunately, though, a new study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative discovered that the same spirit of representation doesn't appear to have spread to those working behind the scenes.

According to the new study, over the past 12 years, only 3% of animated movies were directed by women, Variety reported. That number is even smaller among women of color — Jennifer Yuh Nelson, who directed Kung Fun Panda 2, was the only woman of color to direct an animated film.

When it came to women directors working on television series, the number improved, but only slightly, Variety reported. Thirteen percent of animated programs that aired in 2018 were directed by a woman, and just three of those directors were women of color.

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Camila Mendes Is Taking It All in Stride

Camila Mendes has been on the grind. It's been hard for the actor to find a moment of calm — a moment to breathe, a moment when she's not filming a new movie, wrapping up a season of Riverdale, or hopping between cities, meetings, and wardrobe fittings. "It's great, because it's all for good opportunities and things I want to do," Camila tells Teen Vogue.

But there is always a catch. "I seriously have problems when it comes to taking time to chill," she says. "I'm trying to learn how to be like, Do I need to say yes to this? Do I need to do that? Is it really worth it? Could I have a day for myself?"

So far the hard choices have been worth it. Camila, who is 24, is filming not one but two movies before Riverdale starts filming season four in July. She's also going to attend the exclusive, legendary Met Gala for the first time, and grappling with the pressures and public glory that can bring with it. It's a transformative time for the young star. During her first few years in Hollywood, she’s had to learn how to handle other people's assumptions about her while maintaining a sense of who she actually is and what she wants out of life, and for her burgeoning career.

But that breather she's been craving has been hard to come by. So when it’s time for Camila to sit down with Teen Vogue for the May cover story, the busy Riverdale star suggests meeting at Color Me Mine, the paint-your-own-pottery studio with shops across the United States. She has one day off during a week of shooting a supporting role in the Andy Samberg comedy Palm Springs, and she wants to do something soothing. "Everyone's so anxious all the time, it's just a part of our lives," she says. "This whole week I haven't been able to stop and do something like this, you know? Something that's not necessarily productive."

The irony, of course, is that this interview is still work; another day that she does not have time to disconnect, to not be "on," to just be a 20-something zoning out in her apartment or Marie Kondo-ing her closet. Camila’s statement on her Twitter banner seems to fit the mood: "I want to cry but I have things to do." Pottery painting will have to suffice, for now. So Camila sits, brushing green paint over the edges of the ceramic jewelry box she's chosen as her project for the day. "This feels therapeutic," she says.

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Maisie Williams Thought People Would Underestimate Arya Stark and Her Destiny in "Game of Thrones"

Note: Major spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8 episode 3 ahead.

Arya Stark did that thing — and, no, we’re not talking about that other thing.

In the latest episode of Game of Thrones, Arya finally put her faceless assassin skills to the test and killed the Night King during the Battle of Winterfell in one of the series’ biggest twists ever. Under Bran’s attentive gaze, Arya dealt the lethal blow that would end the endless night — with the infamous Valyrian steel dagger that was once sent to kill Bran. A girl might have no name but she definitely has a certain je ne sais quoi.

Arya’s killing of the Night King was undoubtedly the highlight of the episode, however, actor Maisie Williams wasn’t so confident the audience would enjoy the choice. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Maisie revealed that while the feat was “so unbelievably exciting,” she also was almost certain no one would actually enjoy it.

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Outrage at Arya Stark's "Game of Thrones" Sex Scene Is Misplaced

Arya Stark had sex.

Plainly speaking, that shouldn’t be a point of contention for anyone. An 18-year-old woman, Arya has been on her own since she was 11 years old, survived countless kidnappings, escaped death more than once, and even learned to become absolutely No One. She is deadly, proving time and time again she’s not one to be messed with, eliminating her enemies and those that threaten her family without thinking twice. And, yet, a young woman wanting to consensually experience coitus has “Game of Thrones” fans up in arms.

Since the second episode of the final season of Game of Thrones aired, the internet has been ablaze with critics of the sultry scene. Some have blasted showrunners for sexualizing Arya, while others have lamented the use of sex as a way to prove the youngest living Stark is no longer a child. While it’s true that character development can be written in a number of ways that doesn’t include “losing virginity” as proof of adulthood, Arya’s decision to have sex is one that should be respected, not chastised — especially when it’s one of few examples of consensual sex on the show.

In the same episode that Arya has sex, Ser Brienne of Tarth reveals she was once captured and nearly raped. Arya’s own sister Sansa was repeatedly abused by her husband Ramsay Bolton for a majority of the fifth season. Iron Throne contender and dragon mother Daenerys Targaryen was also raped by her husband Khal Drogo early on in her story arc.

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Giving Plants Legal Rights Could Help Save the Planet

Who has rights? What rights do they have? Can circumstances change regarding who does and doesn't have rights? And should entities other than humans have rights? These are some of the central questions posed by legislation passed in late December by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota to ensure the rights something unexpected: manoomin wild rice.

The statutes represent landmark legislation in the United States since they are the first “to recognize legal rights of a plant species,” said Mari Margil, head of the International Center for the Rights of Nature at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). The new statutes, drafted in consultation with CELDF, include provisions to allow manoomin to "exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve." Consistent with this goal is the right to have pure water and a healthy climate system, the right to be free from patents, and the right to be free from contamination by genetically engineered organisms.

In summary, manoomin wild rice is deserving of legal standing in U.S. courts — legal personhood. This would allow people, or organizations, to bring lawsuits on behalf of wild rice arguing that the grain itself was being harmed through an action. There would be no need to demonstrate that a person, or another entity with legal personhood, like a corporation, was being harmed.

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In This Moment of Revived Racism, the Red Summer of 1919 Matters

OG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens. In this piece, Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, organizer/curriculum writer for the Zinn Education Project and high school social studies teacher, explains the importance of the Red Summer of 1919.

Some of America’s most notorious racist riots happened 100 years ago this summer. Confronting a national epidemic of white mob violence, 1919 was a time when black people in the United States defended themselves, fought back, and demanded full citizenship through thousands of acts of courage, small and large, individual and collective.

But pull a standard U.S. history textbook off the shelf and you’re unlikely to find more than a paragraph on the 1919 riots. What you do find downplays both racism and black resistance while distorting facts in a dangerous “both sides” framing. These textbooks render students stupid about white supremacy and bereft of examples from those who defied it.

At this moment of revived racist backlash, all of us need to learn the lessons of 1919.

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Mexican Revolutionary Petra Herrera Posed as a Man to Fight for Her Country

In 1998, Disney released its Oscar-nominated film Mulan, an animated movie that followed the heroic adventures of one fictional woman who took her father’s place in the Chinese Imperial Army. In changing her name, training with the troops, and disguising herself as a male soldier, Mulan took actions that might be far from reality, but her story is eerily similar to that of a real Mexican heroine: Petra Herrera.

Unlike Mulan, Herrera’s story isn’t filtered through rose-colored lenses. There is no happy ending, few history books that remember her heroic actions. But Herrera’s valiance and skills as one of the Mexican Revolution’s most successful soldaderas are an example of the bravery and sacrifices women during this time made to change the history of Mexico’s politics — and should not be forgotten.

The year was 1910, and revolutionaries across Mexico were rising up to fight against elitist dictator Porfirio Díaz’s corrupt government. It would be a decade-long bloody civil war that would claim the lives of an estimated 1.5 million people. Herrera herself was killed during that time.

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9 Unforgettable Life Lessons From "10 Things I Hate About You"

To say that 10 Things I Hate About You achieved icon status nearly instantaneously would not be an exaggeration.

The film, which hit theaters in 1999, posed a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew: popular high schooler Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik) wasn’t allowed to date until her older outcast of a sister, Kat (Julia Stiles), accepted a date of her own. Mix together two of Bianca’s would-be suiters, a bribe gone wrong, a dramatic house party, and a climatic prom night, and you pretty much have all the necessary ingredients for a classic ‘90s teen rom-com.

But 10 Things was more than that. It was special, and continues to be special, in a way that is hard to define with one singular explanation. Perhaps it was the hilarious one-liners, many of which are still quotable today (“Can you ever just be whelmed?”). Or maybe it was the soundtrack, filled with nostalgic songs that have the ability to transport you back in time whenever you revisit them. Or maybe it was simply because of Heath Ledger, who stole our hearts the second he stepped into Ms. Perky’s office, joking: “Should I, uh, get the lights?”

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4 Asian-American Women Who Changed History

It’s no secret that most social studies curricula in the United States are crammed full of narratives about white men. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard about George Washington crossing the Delaware River, yet every history class I’ve taken seems to come and go without any discussion of people who look like me.

There's no mention of the Chinese laborers instrumental in constructing the transcontinental railroad; little discussion of the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans wrongly placed in internment camps during World War II; and, critically, no commemoration of the countless Asian-Americans who changed the course of U.S. history.

Asian-Americans, especially Asian-American women, are often pigeonholed as meek or unassertive, rather than depicted as leaders. The roots of these stereotypes lie in the erasure of Asian trailblazers in history.

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"Detox Teas" Are Basically Laxatives, and They Fueled My Eating Disorder

In this essay, Iman Hariri-Kia opens up about how laxative teas fueled her eating disorder when she was younger.

On a Saturday night, I sat out on a balcony overlooking New York City with three of my high school friends. Now in our 20s, we sat cross-legged as we did when we were schoolgirls, divulging secrets, and discussing the ills that stayed with us as we grew up. That night, we all admitted to having struggled with different types of disordered eating by the time we left for college. As I chronicled my own journey, I watched one of my close friends as she listened intently, mouth agape. “I had no idea,” said, wide-eyed. How could she? As a teenager, I was a master in the art of gaslighting everyone about my illness, including myself.

As a preteen, I lived what can only be described as a sedentary lifestyle. I lacked the hand-eye coordination to excel in any kind of organized team sport, and I dreaded disappointing my peers. So I just refused to participate. When others ran, I walked. During P.E., I exercised my right to visit the nurse’s office. I never considered the long-term effects this lack of exercise might have on my physical health, because, on a surface level, I appeared to be a healthy kid, growing at a rapid rate. But that all came to a startling halt when I turned 13 and quickly began gaining weight. I felt blindsided and betrayed by my own body. Furthermore, my understanding of the word “healthy” had no doubt been extremely skewed by experiences at home.

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The Real History of Las Soldaderas, the Women Who Made the Mexican Revolution Possible

OG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens. In this installment, Teen Vogue's Marilyn La Jeunesse explains the history of Las Soldaderas, a group of women fought in the Mexican Revolution.

In the 2006 film Bandidas, Penélope Cruz and Selma Hayak’s characters, with their waist-cinching corsets, plunging V-neck blouses, cowboy hats and revolvers, are the stereotypical epitome of what a Latinx woman — specifically Mexican women — are supposed to be: sexy and dangerous. This contradicting characterization of strong Latinx women has become the norm in Hollywood, but the imagery was inspired by something entirely different: Las Soldaderas, the female soldiers who made the Mexican Revolution possible.

In November 1910, Mexico was plunged into a near decade-long war that pitted the federal government, run by dictator Porfirio Díaz Mori, against thousands of revolutionaries from varying factions. The Revolution was all-encompassing; everyone was expected to join the cause, and those who didn’t were forced to flee the country.

For the revolutionaries, the war was an opportunity to overthrow the outdated class system put in place by the Spanish elite. These revolutionaries saw it as a time for Mexico to reward the people who worked the land, not the other way around: a war for the mestizos; a war for the indigenous; and a war for the poor. But neither side could have endured for nearly 10 years without the dedication of Las Soldaderas.

Although not much is known about the demographics of Las Soldaderas, it is believed that a majority of these female soldiers were in their late teens and early twenties, and involved women of various ethnicities, including Afro-Mexicans and people of Spanish descent. As outlined in a 2009 scholarly article by Delia Fernández, now an assistant professor of history and core faculty in Chicano Latino studies at Michigan State University, women like Señora María Sánchez, Señora Pimental, and Petra Herrera — who fought as “Pedro” — showed that women could hold their own amid a bloody civil war. These soldiers fought on all sides, with many elite women joining the federales ranks and others joining different revolutionary leaders, like Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Venustiano Carranza.

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Tara Campbell Is California's Youngest-Ever Female Mayor

Tara Campbell prides herself on being prepared. At the end of 2018, the 25-year-old made history when she was appointed mayor of Yorba Linda, California, becoming the state's youngest female mayor in history. Nearly three months into her term, she’s focused on leading the city where she grew up and proving that her youth is an asset to city governance.

She acknowledges that being a younger candidate comes with added pressure, more than people might expect. When she first ran for City Council in Yorba Linda, in 2016, Campbell had already served on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission (during that time, she attended council meetings and diligently studied the city’s spending).

She was elected to the City Council in November of that year. After two years, the council appointed her mayor.

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Eating Disorders Impact Everyone Regardless of Race, Class or Gender

For years, Ryan Sheldon didn’t know he had an eating disorder. The model, who now runs the Instagram account @BingeEaterConfessions, was diagnosed with binge eating disorder in 2015, but he began dealing with his eating disorder much earlier than that.

“I would visit a drive-thru and I’d spend five times the amount of money than the average person and I thought that was totally normal,” Ryan told Teen Vogue. “[Once] I was with my friend and they said, ‘Ryan, how do you spend that much money?’ ...and then it just became this secretive thing where I would basically eat in private.”

Despite being in therapy for a large portion of his life, Ryan said body image and eating habits never came up with his doctor. “I don't know if it's because I was a guy or if it's just because my therapist wasn't too familiar with eating disorders in general, but I never really knew that anything was that wrong with me.”

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