Marley Dias, the upbeat and bespectacled 12-year-old founder of #BlackGirlBooks, was in charge of fielding questions from the audience for Hillary Clinton and Yara Shahidi at the Teen Vogue Summit. “The biggest request is for both of you to just say everything’s going to be okay,” Marley said.
The ask was a heartbreaker. It was a request I wish teen girls didn’t feel they had to make, but as one of the few adult women in the crowd, I realized I wanted to hear Hillary say it, too.“It’s up to us, but if we act, everything is going to be okay,” Hillary reassured the crowd of hundreds of young women, about 50 of whom had earned scholarships to travel from across the country to the two-day summit. Her measured response summed up the theme of her conversation with teen activist and Blackish star Yara Shahidi at the event’s keynote: hopeful, but under no illusions about the challenges young women and younger generations are facing.
Hundreds of teens milled around on the morning of Dec. 2 before Hillary spoke, claiming faux fur beanbags and folding chairs on a sprawling corporate campus in Playa Vista, CA. Seats near the stage, where the woman who nearly shattered that last glass ceiling share some wisdom, went fast. When Hillary and Yara took the stage, girls rushed toward the stage to snap photos and wave.
Hillary and Yara, who is heading to Harvard in the Fall, talked about mentorship, the power of midterm elections, and…
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