I recently wrote an essay, for an awesome paper I do on gender and sexuality in the media, on heteronormativity and the fetishisation of marriage in the fashion blogosphere. It was possibly the awesomest essay I've ever written, although I'm not gonna reproduce it here because it is full of boring academic references, and also it specifically analyses several prominent bloggers and their treatment of romantic relationships, and I'd feel weird about putting that on the internet. (If you want to read it though, feel free to email me, my address is on our 'about' page.) But god, I've never thought about blogging as seriously as I did while writing that essay. When you step back and take a look at personal style blogging, it's really, really weird. It's such a tight-knit little
community, full of awesome people who love and support each other, but
sometimes it's not all it's cracked up to be. It seems like fashion blogging in particular just
creates its own conventions and norms, parallel to those in mainstream mass media that blogging is so often praised for being able to subvert and overthrow. There are definitely a
set of observable patterns to the style blogs with the most readers, and
I don't think I need to list them. I sometimes feel shitty and guilty for buying
into them without actively making any choices- I am about as normative you
can get in terms of the fashion blogosphere. And often when I mention my
boyfriend, even just in passing, I feel a strange guilt for reinforcing heteronormativity in
fashion blogs. But nobody should be made to feel guilty for being who they are. Including queer bloggers and individuals. Down with heteronormativity!
One of my absolute favourite bloggers ever, who also
happens to be queer, has spoken to me before about how the style
blogging world can be isolating for her due to the whole fetishisation
of the photographer-boyfriend (or husband) character. And I know she is not the only one. There is an expectation that extremely stylish bloggers will have extremely stylish boyfriends whose photographs and photographs of whom will feature in their posts, who will have an awesome bloggable life full of food that photographs well and an appropriately whimsical home. Marriage is fetishised to a huge extent, and the event itself is turned into a living blog post. And if you are heterosexual, that's great! And if you have an awesome whimsical wedding, that's also great! Power to you! Wedding posts make me cry for some reason! But there is a hazy sort of line where blogging about one's cute life can become isolating and alientating for anyone who doesn't include a heterosexual partner in their blogging routine- because they don't have a heterosexual partner, or because said partner isn't interested in featuring on a blog.
The assumption is made, both in the blogosphere and in any other aspect of life, that an individual is heterosexual and cisgendered until they say otherwise. And to identify as anything other than utterly normative in terms of gender and sexuality requires this whole process of interpellation and subjectification that is kinda ridiculous. I never have to announce myself as a straight person. But because fashion blogging is often intertwined with lifestyle, mentioning 'me and my boyfriend went opshopping today' is totally innocuous. But if a female blogger mentions she and her girlfriend, it's suddenly perceived as political, or making a statement. On a similar note- I found a reading (I've lost it, if you know the author please let me know because I can't remember) that talked about how interesting it was that we've decided the gender of the person you're sleeping with is what is the most important thing about them, or the most important thing about how we have sex. Nobody ever asks 'are you lights-off?', but 'are you gay?'. Somehow this has become SO important, yet so under-represented in the blogosphere. Studies have repeatedly shown (and I can give you sources, if you want) that members of the LGBT community read blogs and participate actively in the internet at a significantly higher level than straight-identifying individuals, so why is the LGBT presence in fashion blogging so weak? And why are there so many engrained conventions that prioritise heterosexual long-term cohabitation as the holy grail of all relationships in the grand hierarchy of what is legitimate and what isn't?
Speaking of heteronormativity,
Kristin drew my attention to
this post over at IFB about how you should make sure your blog makes you look smart, successful and sexually available, just in case a guy you're going on a date with googles your name. Because that is possibly the most important thing in the world, right? Also, this article assumes the entire audience is straight, and desperately want advice on how to snag and retain a man.
Cool. As Kristin said, blogging is meant to be a place where we can represent ourselves however we want without having to think about being objects of the male gaze like women do constantly in other forms of media. Because we are 100% free to construct our own representations of ourselves, our lifestyles and our relationships, we have absolute agency over our identities as women (or non-women), which we should be using to challenge the way we think about fashion, not to make us look like marriage material. Instead of asking yourself if you would say aloud to
'him' what you have just written, reassure yourself that if he was a decent person he would think it's cool that you write about your passion and express yourself through how you dress yourself.
The other day my boyfriend and I were talking about something and he mentioned my blog and I was like 'hey now, you've never even read my blog!' and it suddenly occurred to me why he doesn't care (in the nicest, most caring way possible) about my blog. He sees me and talks to me every day, he sees what I am wearing, asks me where I got that dress, is often with me when I bought said dress. Why would he have any interest in reading it too? He doesn't care what I write about, and I don't think any of my friends, nor my brothers, nor my parents, nor my cousins particularly do either, although they've all read this blog at various times. Also IFB is pretty shit actually, does anyone else agree? I was thinking that perhaps me and some Smashies (you know who you are) and maybe some other awesome feminist bloggers could probably start a pretty good blog for queer and feminist critique of the blogosphere and fashion world, anyone keen?
I can pretend all I want that this blog has potential to be super famous and successful, but I don't have any money, let alone enough to compete with the likes of... y'know. My home will never look like Elsa Billgren's, as much as I would like it to, but we do have awesome space-print curtains we got for a pittance on Trademe and some great paintings and novelty-print pillowcases from opshops. I am utterly content with my life of picking up furniture on the side of the road and freezing half to death in our rickety, over-populated flat, despite its lack of 'mainstream' blog-ability. And I think I might start being a bit more vocal about being an unemployed and very poor student living a very studenty life, because it's one of the very few things that sets me apart from the majority of young professionals in the blogosphere. I don't need to pretend that I have lots of money or quietly gloss over the fact that my savings are rapidly depleting and I am beginning to get anxious about my future, because maybe that's one of the things that could become a bit of a ~selling point~ of my blog entries? I don't know.
Congrats if you have got through all of this. It doesn't really have a thesis statement, just a lot of feelings I have about blogging. I guess this will be my last post for a few days because Jack and I are going to stay with his parents for a while, for another intense runaround of every single opshop in Taranaki and various other districts between there and Wellington. For your time, here are some pictures of my wardrobe rail thing from the
other day. I think all the fabrics look so great together.
