Blog-Mart
I had this thought the other day about blogs, and maybe it sounds kind of paranoid (or even naïve), but, I’ve seen some really cool “mom” blogs on the net and I always enjoy reading them, but I started to wonder about them the other day. A lot of these blogs are updated on a very regular basis by women with multiple children (teh mommeh, this is not about you at all), with obviously very busy lives, yet they seem to have tons of time for things like scrap booking, updating the blog, making it fancy etc., posting family pictures with descriptions, linking to other sites. One of the things I noticed is that some of these women talk about certain things they have bought (shoes, kitchen items etc) and they link to the product’s website from their blog. I find that kind of strange.
Then I started wondering if these blogs were not by the women who we think are authoring them, but by someone in some advertising company. Maybe the advertising companies find cool blogs like these and then hijack them. I know you can have advertising on your blog and get paid for it, but I am wondering if these blogs may have been created for the sole purpose of selling products to women. I mean, these blogs are inspirational – the mothers are so perfect, the kids are perfect, they bake, they decorate, and they go on nice vacations. Why wouldn’t that appeal to us? I mean, I’m not the most conventional person, but I’m guilty of looking through Martha Stewart magazines and worrying about making a nice home for my family. I’m not the ideal consumer; I refuse to shop at places like Wal-Mart (Sprawl-Mart) and I don’t buy into the “keeping up with the Jones’ bullshit, but I read these blogs. And they’re nice. It’s like internet escapism. A perfect little Norman Rockwell world.
Am I paranoid, or is everyone else already aware of this?
I don’t have kids yet. I have a full-time job, a part-time research job that I do from home, a husband, two cats and a puppy a house to keep clean, a social life to squeeze in and I barely have time to shit. How are these women doing it?
Then I started wondering if these blogs were not by the women who we think are authoring them, but by someone in some advertising company. Maybe the advertising companies find cool blogs like these and then hijack them. I know you can have advertising on your blog and get paid for it, but I am wondering if these blogs may have been created for the sole purpose of selling products to women. I mean, these blogs are inspirational – the mothers are so perfect, the kids are perfect, they bake, they decorate, and they go on nice vacations. Why wouldn’t that appeal to us? I mean, I’m not the most conventional person, but I’m guilty of looking through Martha Stewart magazines and worrying about making a nice home for my family. I’m not the ideal consumer; I refuse to shop at places like Wal-Mart (Sprawl-Mart) and I don’t buy into the “keeping up with the Jones’ bullshit, but I read these blogs. And they’re nice. It’s like internet escapism. A perfect little Norman Rockwell world.
Am I paranoid, or is everyone else already aware of this?
I don’t have kids yet. I have a full-time job, a part-time research job that I do from home, a husband, two cats and a puppy a house to keep clean, a social life to squeeze in and I barely have time to shit. How are these women doing it?
posted by vegan mum at 3:17 PM
1 Comments:
I have often wondered the same thing. Like the few blogs I have linked from my site... holy HELL. How do they do it all?? Not to mention they are all stay-at-home-moms who do nothing all day but scrapbook and take care of kids.
As someone who has only slightly delved into the world of scrapbooking I can tell you it's an expensive hobby. If you're a stay at home mom, you'de better have a husband with a pretty damn high paying job in order to keep a house, feed 4 kids, clothe them in all the fancy froofy clothes they wear, and feed the wife's scrapbooking hobby.
I dont know how they do it, but I keep them linked onto my site only as, like you say, a means of escapism into that 'perfect' little white picket fence Pleasantville world that I havent been able to achieve yet.
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