It’s been a long and busy week, so I no longer remember who linked me to the Jezebel article The New Decornographers (boy is that an unwieldy title) but I’m very grateful, mystery friend! The article, written by Sadie Stein, discusses the effect of the spate of craft, domestic, and fashion blogs on women. Actually, more specifically, it discusses their effect on Ms. Stein, but there are larger implications woven into the article.
I’m both a writer and a consumer of craft blogs, so this topic interests me greatly. You may remember the storms that arose in 2007 when the blogger Jane Brocket released her book The Gentle Art of Domesticity, inspiring backlash and anger from feminists in Britain. (On a wholly egotistical note, that storm inspired what I consider to be my best blog entry to date.) There’s no violence in this squall. Ms. Stein isn’t really condemning the blogs in which the domestic is writ large so much as expressing her own bemused fascination and frustration with the domestic blogs. (I’m lumping all the various craft, food, fashion, and lifestyle blogs under the header of “domestic”, which may or may not be fair, but it’s at least simpler!)
The point of the article is that so many people are Martha Stewart these days. While I think it would be inaccurate to say that Martha was the only model of active domestic femininity that the pre-internet generation had to worry about, never has it been so easy for a wannabe domestic goddess to promote her lifestyle to an audience. All it takes is a hobby, a camera, some photo editing software, and you too can be a queen of the internet.
This sort of blog depends largely on photos. Cropped, artful photos, color edited for mood. We get a little story from these pictures. It is of course an intentionally partial view, usually quite literally (these are most often cropped close-ups) and with artful blurring to heighten the sense of depth. If I sound critical, I’m not wholly so. As I discussed in a recent previous post, I try for this sort of artful photograph myself, and while I’m not nearly as skilled in photography as the best of the domestic bloggers, I think sometimes my pictures look pretty swanky. I like swanky pictures. But it is important to remember that the camera does indeed lie, and quite ingeniously at that. Close cropped photos are intentionally not showing you everything that there is to see.
You can't see the dying leaves with spots, because I cropped them!
The article goes on to discuss the ways in which blogs of this sort make the author, and others, feel bad even as they hold a certain allure. This is where I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, some blogs do seem to be an intentionally rosy picture of life that has an inherent smugness attached to it. Others, while not smug, do seem effortless in a way that is unlikely at best, and entirely false at worst. However, the self flagellating reader is not choosing to read these blogs at random. There are plenty of blogs out there by every day schmoes with regular lives and crappy cameras and a perfectly decent writing style. The very reason that the guilt-inducing blogs are sought is their perfection.
The artichokes look pretty because I framed them so that the overgrown weeds don't show. My backyard is seriously messy.
At the time I’m writing this, there are so many blogs on the internet that while the exact number is not known, it IS known to be upwards of 100 million. In the time it takes me to write this entry, hundreds, possibly thousands more blogs have started. Your choice in blog reading is almost literally innumerable, and when the numbers get to be so great, it’s a very small number that stand out. Those that stand out often do so because of photographs.
Let’s face it. You can look at the mess on your own desk whenever you like. Domestic blogs are entertainment and escapism. Sure, they may offer a cupcake recipe, a knitting pattern, or a fashion tip that you’ll use, but generally speaking, we don’t read blogs looking to adopt a new lifestyle. While the self consciously perfect person is yet more insufferable when she insists, “I’m just like you, really!” I don’t think bloggers are under any obligation to show sides they don’t wish to display. If you keep a fashion blog, I don’t need to see a flash lit picture of you in your ratty pajamas at noon for every keen photo in which you display dashing sartorial sense.
We took about a hundred photos. Only a handful looked good.
One of the things that this article did was cause me to go back through my archives and look at my blog. Honestly, I can’t see it well. I don’t think any of us can see ourselves well. I have no idea how people see me. I can’t get rid of the context I have that tells me that I spend a lot of the week in a big ugly mess, that I lose my temper with my kids more often than I’d like, that there are whole days in which I get very little done. I’m not taking pictures of my messy desk or my ratty pajamas or the times when, instead of doing a cool craft project, I snap at the kids and they behave like little monsters. But I know all that’s there, whether it shows or not, and it makes it impossible for me to gauge whether I am, myself, presenting an intimidating front. I don’t think I am. But I’m also here with my posed and edited photos, leaving out huge chunks of my life and presenting the parts that look good.
I believe strongly that the personal is political. I believe that women hurt each other when we pretend to be OK all of the time, when we pretend that having it all is something we can all do. I believe that making choices and sharing those choices helps keep us whole. But I don’t share every choice, every flaw, and truth be told, I have no intention to do so. This isn’t the place where I do that. This is primarily the space where I write about my knitting, and where I occasionally write something like this, but it’s mostly just the place where I write about knitting. I don’t even share all of that. Sometimes, when a project is so discouraging or has failed so hard, I am too depressed to turn it into a funny story or a useful lesson or a tale of woe.
Women and men both have it tough these days. Women and men have always had it tough, and the toughness changes over the years. Right now, we’re in a transition and no one knows quite what’s expected of them. Rigid gender roles aren’t gone, but they’re softening, and that’s freeing, but it’s also scary. Some of us retreat to more hardened gender roles to feel safe, and some of us push against any expectations we perceive and most of us try to make a path that feels sort of comfortable. Sometimes, the very things we seek out for comfort or ideas or for entertainment are the things that make us feel most lacking. But the truth is, none of the perfect cupcake ladies is really perfect. Some of these bloggers are writing from a place of privilege. They can afford to stay home and bake lovely cakes for fun. Some of these bloggers are writing their blogs after a long day slogging at a job that they hate and baking perfect cupcakes is how they relax. Some bloggers are baking perfect cupcakes in between changing dirty diapers and running around the house desperately trying to keep ahead of the mess, and those perfect cupcakes are the one thing that is under control.
The point is, how we react to these blogs is far more about us than about the blogs. Some of these blogs aren’t very good, really. Some aren’t really good for us, anymore than indulging in perfect cupcakes would be good if it was an every day occurrence. But we can click on that little X in the corner, close the browser window, and step back into our imperfect lives, lives we sometimes make a little more perfect with a camera lens and a story.
