[RIP] Roxy Roknian of Broadist

On Sunday, the Internet lost an important voice, feminism lost an ally, the law lost a soon-to-be great, and I lost a friend. Her site Broadist (co-founded by Roxy and Caroline Shadood) was a fashion blog, but it was also much, much more. It was a site about female empowerment, about positive body image, about self-acceptance. It was a site that helped thousands of women stand-up to societal pressures, to reject conventional beauty norms, and to celebrate themselves. Like so many of us, raised on a steady diet of airbrushed models and starved starlets, Roxy struggled with her own body image, with feeling good about how she looked. She took that struggle and made it public. She took that struggle and her love for fashion and found a way to understand that the most important thing was how you felt about yourself, not what others thought of you, and she taught that to thousands of followers.

Roxy was only a few months away from graduating from law school. She was one the most intelligent people I have ever known, and I have no doubt she would have been one of the best dressed lawyers to set foot in a court room. She had the special combination of being both truly nerdy (this is the girl who founded a chemistry club in college and whose obsession was urban planning) and utterly cool (if you were ever able to witness Roxy move in any sort of social gathering, which I was privileged to a few times, her draw was obvious). We were unlikely friends, brought together as children by the life long friendship of our parents, and in adulthood we recognized each other as kindred spirits in a group of Persian kids who we could never fully relate to. While we never really lived in the same place, through hours-long talks over iChat we came to know one another very well, talking about everything from relationships to life paths to cute shoes, and even on my darkest days, Roxy could make me smile; she was not just bright and lovely, but absolutely hilarious as well. I wish I could have brightened her life a fraction of the amount she brightened mine.

Even though we came to know one another through our families, I would have been lucky to know her in any context at all. She was a truly wonderful person, the kind you don’t meet often, and both I, and the entire world, are a little worse off without her.

I know she’s out there somewhere right now, wearing her fabulous new fur coat and making all the angels laugh.

Her mother shared a particularly empowering (and particularly Roxy) post today at her funeral, and I think everyone can take something from it. Read it HERE.