Well, I suppose I should explain the chain that brought me to this post. I named my blog "A Blog of One's Own" because of a sort of underdeveloped idea about mommy blogs and what they mean for women and what they say about society. Mostly that underdeveloped idea is...what do mommy blogs mean for women and what do they say about society?
I started to look for a speech to analyze for class, and since this issue of women writing blogs was on my mind, I read a few speeches by Virginia Woolf. I had a hunch that I was not the only blogger to ever choose this name for my blog, so I looked it up. Google returned over 5,000 results for "a blog of one's own". I'm sure that all of those links are not blogs, but there are quite a handful of them. This eventually led me in a rather neat circle, as I found this (http://childwild.com/2010/03/16/a-blog-of-ones-own/) blog that talks about just what I am thinking about - including how blogs can be a virtual room of one's own and what Virginia Woolf might think about blogs.
The childwild blog led me to this (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/fashion/14moms.html?pagewanted=1) New York Times article which I also found interesting.
I'll be honest - I am a little...uncertain..about mommy blogs. As a young married woman, the prospect of having a mommy blog is ever encroaching. I will one day have children. I do love to write. But will I blog? And if I do, will it be all about being a mother? Writing a blog is different than writing a personal essay, a short story, a novel. In my mind it still somehow cheapens the written word. And like that NY Times article alludes to, the feeling I get when I think about mommy blogs is akin to the feeling I get when I think about Tupperware parties or casseroles. My concern, partly, is that instead of blogs becoming a room of one's own for mothers, they become an extension of the space young mothers already have - filled with all of the things their real rooms are already filled with.
What is the function of a blog? Is it a room of ones own or is it a virtual living room? Should I feel bad for stereotyping mommy blogs? I do. I do feel sort of bad. As a woman I embrace the multitude of opportunities that 21st century women have to express themselves, to write, to work professionally and to be mothers. Part of me is offended when mommy blogs are labeled as just another Tupperware party for women. There is something offensive in the idea that mothers writing about motherhood is not "real" writing - not useful or interesting. As Liz Gumbinner put it in her reaction to the NY Times article, "more silly mommies and their silly “expensive hobby.”" (http://www.mom-101.com/2010/03/honey-dont-bother-mommy-im-writing-a-mildly-annoyed-letter-to-the-new-york-times.html).
The NY Times article received quite the backlash, Liz Gumbinner's blog being just one of the reactions. (Other reactions can be seen here: http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/2010/03/15/honey-dont-bother-the-gray-lady-shes-busy-angering-mommybloggers/).
In summary, I still don't know what I think about blogs.
