Interview Teen-O-Vision

Kids these days, on The Hills and the Gossip Girl, with their frenemies and their Teen Vogue internships. This week we figure out what's the matter with them.

 

Twenty-year-old Stacey Farber in uniquely positioned to comment on The Hills. For the past seven seasons she's starred on Degrassi: The Next Generation, and this past winter she interned at Teen Vogue in New York City, just like Lauren and Whitney did on the show.

 

"It's definitely entertaining, but it was cooler when we all thought it was real," says Farber, born and raised in Toronto and currently digging her heels into a journalism degree at The New School in New York.

 

Farber, who was advised not to talk about the show, says she has friends who actually interned at Teen Vogue in Los Angeles, where The Hills girls supposedly worked, and they definitely were not fans of the program.

 

"They would be kicked out of their little fashion closet so The Hills girls could shoot for five hours," says Farber, who wrote a popular blog for Teen Vogue during her four-month stint. "When they would leave, my friends could do, like, actual work."

 

So what does a Teen Vogue intern do?

 

Mostly, it's steaming and folding clothes, although Farber had the good fortune to work in the web department and cover New York's Fashion Week and conduct on-the-street interviews. An episode of Farber's Teen Vogue internship probably could have centred around her experiences interviewing Emma Roberts, who appeared in the Nickelodeon show Unfabulous and has a slew of movies slated for release later this year.

"I had to subway up to the Ritz-Carlton by myself and was harassed by this really drunk woman in the bathroom," she says of her first celebrity interview. "I'd been interviewed before, but [I had] never interviewed anybody. It was pretty cool."

 

Farber has actually been interviewed quite a bit. She was nominated for a Young Artist Award and acted opposite Jason Patric in Narc. When she took the job at Teen Vogue, fashionista.com even mused as to whether this was a Degrassi plot twist or the roots of a new reality show.

"They wondered whether I was the next Hills girl," she says. "That would've been cool; I could've put Teen Vogue on my résumé and not actually done anything."

 

Farber says Teen Vogue is the fashion bible for 12- to 19-year-old girls and that her experience didn't really mirror The Hills nor The Devil Wears Prada; but as an actress, she understands the division between reality and TV.

"There's only so much visually you can shoot," she says, describing such important, though sexless duties as calling clothes in from publicity houses and steaming the wrinkles out of shpants (leggings that are neither shorts nor pants).

 

Farber's not sure where life will lead her next. She almost nabbed Ellen Page's role in Juno and says she's up for another lead role in a film, but she also loves fashion magazines and dreams of starting a glossy teen rag in Canada.

 

And so, we had to ask: Would Farber let a faux-reality show film at Stacey Farber: The Magazine?

"If it was just starting out, I would do it because it attracts a lot of publicity," she says. "If my magazine was already established, I don't think so. I wouldn't want a show giving it a bad name."

 

Hot fun in the summertime:

Stacey Farber on the people, places and outfits that are guaranteed to raise this summer's mercury.

 

5 Grecian gladiator sandals

"They're definitely what's in. I bought a pair two years ago at a Payless in the Promenade Mall in Thornhill. I'm not taking credit for the whole trend, but let's just say I have a good eye."

 

4 Bittersweet World, Ashlee Simpson

"I know she's kind of a joke, but I liked her other two albums."

3 The Olsen Twins

"Sometimes it looks like they're wearing a costume, but I've been a fan since Full House - definite fashion icons."

 

2 The June issue of Teen Vogue

"There's a really racy article on this model and it goes into gross detail about how she's admitting to having this crazy eating disorder and the pressure to be disgustingly thin. When it hits the newsstands, there'll be lots of controversy."

 

1 Summer dresses

"People are wearing flower prints this season and exotic native designs with lots of colour. It's been a long winter. I can't wait to bust out my summer wardrobe."

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