The Unbearable Lightness Of Blogging

Photo sourced from WeHeartIt

We all have those aspirational blogs on our dashboard. You know the ones - the ones with the picturesque healthy food, the gooiest most delicious recipes, the outfit posts with layer upon layer of new clothing from the latest collections with a little (or a lot) of designer thrown in; the ones with the highly organised and magazine-worthy living spaces and latest limited edition bronzer that costs more than your weekly food shop. We love them because they are aesthetically pleasing and aspirational or we loathe them because they don't reflect our own lives. We wonder how these people can afford to buy all of this while still eating out which the information for is readily available on their perfectly composed Instagram feed. We envy their hair that has been salon coloured and their tan which doesn't seem out of the bottle against their rose gold Michael Kors watch.

Lately I've been seeing more and more people write about how tired they are of it. They write about how these people choose to live their lives or spend their money or photograph their day. They comment on how these people don't live in the real world and how their picture-perfect lives are so wholly unattainable that they become intrusively irritating.

I am here to comment on the opposite. No, blogs do not reflect real life in all cases but there are plenty that do.

You see, the internet is a fantastic tool and allows everyone to have their own platform with a .com attached for less than the price of a high street lipstick. I've seen comments that blogging used to be for 'normal people' but I argue that it still is. There are thousands upon thousands of blogs written by people who are in style, out of style, privileged, struggling, man or woman and stylish or unstylish. There are blogs with 100,000+ followers and those struggling to find a readership of 100. Blogging is for everybody. This fact hasn't changed.

Some blogs are inundated with PR samples of the latest products or clothes or books (or...) and some aren't. Does this make one blog more real than another or more lucky than another? Just because I browse lookbook.nu does not mean I am thin or can fit into/want/afford any of the things some of the people are wearing. When I browse fashion blogs I think of how beautiful the photos are, how the outfit looks on them and if the clothes are too pricey? Well I just look for something more within my budget.

This isn't even mentioning that you just don't know what happens behind the pixels. I know a big blogger who is going through an extremely tough time but does she let it show? No. She takes her photographs perfectly, writes with fluidity and honesty, keeps updating on Instagram even when she's in work with photos she took outside of work and saved and soldiers on. Because, you see, her tough time will pass and she knows this. Her online persona is what people judge, respect and expect and she doesn't want to remember this time in a hiatus or in a post about her feelings. She wants to remember this as a time where nobody but the people who needed to know knew the ins and outs.

Just because a blog is popular it does not mean the owner is your property and open to questions about every life choice.

So blogging is still an everyman's land. Anyone can sign up to Blogger and post content that they love to write and think others would love to read. If they manage to make the shortlist for the blogger awards, get tickets to London/Paris/New York fashion week or have their homes featured in an offline top homeware magazine more power to them. Blogs are our digital magazines read and created by people just like us. PR samples and a perfect background do not change that. Your views of pretention may not always be correct. Life should be enjoyed and while being online is not the be all and end all it is becoming a problem for some and I want to tell them to just shut the laptop down and walk away. Have a coffee. Read a book. Come back refreshed and realise that these are staged versions of our life. They are perfected shots of our day to day wear (whether we take the heels off after the photos or not). They are proofread and edited snippets of what happens to the lucky, the perpetually misfortunate, the honest, the beautiful and the everyone in between.

Are commercialised blogs ruining blogging? No. Why should someone elses choice ruin your love of writing? Why should someone elses gifts from a PR agency ruin your platform to share your favourite outfit, lipstick, recipe or even which one of your fingers is your favourite? The blogger awards are reflective of the society today in which we want to have a say and put forward our favourite blogs that make a difference to our afternoon coffee forward for recognition. I, for one, would rather see a blogger who puts time, effort and dedication into their blog from their content to design and photography in magazines and at LFW than the latest socialite who seems to do nothing but appear on The Valleys showing their fanny.

So in summary, there is no law saying you have to read or participate in these blogs but there is a common rule that says that because someone has something it does not dictate the worth of what you have. It may be disheartening but so is life and if it really bothers you that much, click out of the browser and exhale. It's just a blog.