My big sister is a talented woman and a devoted mother. Last week, we met desperately at IKEA because she thinks she’s failing her household.
Why?
Because her children’s playroom doesn’t look anything like the things she sees in mommy blogs. She doesn’t have a shelf dedicated to Legos, labeled by color. Her wall seating doesn’t fold into a fort, and though she would hate me for mentioning it, her frames open the normal way.
This internet-induced panic is one I’ve borne witness to more than once.
I picked Matthew Inman’s cartoons to make my point because I don’t think he’ll sue me for sexual harassment. I hope.
The Bloggess herself recently wrote a post-- judging herself by the standards of pinterest pin ups and blog babes.
This self-judgement and doubt worries me. The transformation of bloggers into idolizations worries me, too.
When did we all become blog babes?
The internet has gifted the world with the tools necessary to somewhat translate the dimension of a person. It’s a new thing, relatively speaking, and I have to wonder if we– as bricklayers of the internet– are wielding these tools as responsibly and kindly as we should.
Columnists are restricted by their division and venue, and authors so often write from behind a curtain– but bloggers give the illusion of being people you know. They’re no different from neighbors who have opened their hearts to you. There is a sense of full dimensionality but no matter how authentic the blogger– some filtering is always done.
You and I who have blogs know this to be true.
It’s the worst of illusions. As readers, we hope there’s a filter, but as we can’t see it or believe it entirely even when it’s presented– some part of us always gives credence to the voice.
The voice that says, “They are perfect, and I am not.”
Maybe he never burns cookies. Maybe their kids have the best playrooms in the world. Maybe they really travel wherever they want at no cost, emotional or otherwise. Maybe her house is always clean and maybe she really looks that good all the time.
Maybe.
But probably not.
More than likely, most bloggers are like me– with complex back stories and messy lives– who clean up nice enough to put together a story or two.
It’s possible that the internet illusion costs nothing more than the tank of gas it takes a loving mother to fly down a California highway towards a mecca of Swedish furniture– or maybe, horrifically, perhaps it costs someone a piece of their self-esteem.
We can’t be responsible for everyone, and I know that– but we owe it to our readers to be conscious of human nature’s tenuous grasp on self-love, at least. I don’t want to victim blame, or hide from the truth of the burden of the blogged word or pinned image. I can’t fix everything, but I can act.
I can risk more honesty, edit less wrinkles, and love my readers so unconditionally that they wake up every morning knowing this to be true. If I fail in all that, I still have recourse. I can hold myself partially accountable. A loss to one of us is a loss to all, and I can mourn in the traditional method of all storytellers.
I can weave a fable and hope the moral and heart changes the future and stops the cycle.
I wrote one just today.
It’s about a beautiful woman who raised amazing daughters. Daughters who grew up wisely and never gave thought to the unlabeled Lego boxes of their youth…
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P.S. You’re amazing.
