Blogging 101 for myself

For the sake of my family, I have decided to resign from office. Politicians, with a squad of speechwriters and PR experts, attempt to make their failings look slightly more presentable. I, on the other hand, scuttled away from BEDM without any attempt at an explanation. Now I'm here again I could try a bit of politician inspired damage control . After heavy consultation (with myself) and heated debate (all internal) I give you this sentence: I gracefully bowed out, only to make this magnificent unexpected return (yes, it was Beyonce that inspired me.)

Honestly, I had run out of steam. I didn't know what to write about and I didn't want my BEDM to be a string of recommendations. As for why I'm returning four solid weeks later, I've already written about that. Much of what I could say in this post was covered in the link as well. To recap: I don't want anything I write to blend into a fill-in-the-blank bland style. This is reasonable, but it turns into the demand that everything I write must be outstanding.  If it's not, then it's merely perfunctory.

That is ridiculous. But fear, when controlled and in proportion, can be useful. One of my favourite internet creators, shessomickey (aka Amanda, who makes YouTube vlogs under the former name), recently answered a question on her tumblr about blogging. The penultimate sentence is what I needed to figure out. Typical blog topics, such as fashion or lifestyle, aren't my area of expertise. My daily life isn't that interesting and I'm not about to gush my feelings on the internet. Most of the blogs I read are 'mommy' blogs and 19 year old, uni student isn't exactly the right setting for popping out a few sprogs. I'm fortunate enough to be doing study abroad from August, but the "little different" part there is hard. There so many study abroad blogs that their collective ad revenue could fund a round the world aeroplane ticket.

I put scrapbooks in the title, because I wanted to use this blog as a collection place. Each post would be another scrap, another piece of my thoughts and occasionally my life, that created a record. Also, take a brief half second to guess what I'm going to say next, I didn't know what topic(s) I would focus on. Which is why, after yet another late night session with my team, I've decided to reverse engineer and make this blog about arts and crafts. The next post will be a breakdown of me taking one pretty thing, gluing it to another pretty thing and ending up with a messy, sticky monstrosity.

Or I could trust myself and just run with my original 'scrapbooking' idea. I started writing this post a week ago and compared to then I feel more confident about this space. I actually have faith in a few ideas. There are just not enough of them to sustain blogging everyday. Ultimately, I can write what I want and I'm still in blogging infancy. (This is actually a blogging mommy blog. Every post not about crafting will be about blogging.) Hopefully, in a few months' time I'll have a clearer idea of who I'm writing for and be able to summarise what I'm writing about in a few words. Until then this scrapbook won't be as neat as my perfectionist self wants to be.

Shailene Woodley and Feminism

TIME magazine recently interviewed Shailene Woodley, a 22 year old actress starring in the already released film Divergent and the upcoming The Fault in Our Stars. Yesterday, they posted an article entitled, "Shailene Woodley on Why She's Not a Feminist." As TIME points out, it's "one of the hottest topics in Hollywood lately," which is why they devoted a whole piece to it. Big star meets big trend and the end result is pageviews and ad revenue.

Honestly, I was surprised by Woodley's answer. Summary: she loves men and prefers the idea of sisterhood. I thought it was common knowledge that feminism isn't the same as hating men. Firstly, there's Beyonce. Her fifth album, released December last year, has multiple feminist songs and even handily includes a definition in Flawless***. Even before then, in September 2013, Glamour magazine did an interview with Anna Holmes, founding editor of Jezebel, on how the 'F-word' has returned. It isn't the only mainstream women's magazine to address misconceptions and present a positive view of the word feminist. Outside of magazines there's the bestselling "How to be a Woman" by Caitlin Moran and the Everyday Sexism project.

Normally, I would be exasperated by a celebrity who gave an answer similar to Woodley's. This time I'm not for the unfair reason that I like her. She seems like a friendly hippie who is dedicated to her job. Plus in her soon to be released film, an adaptation of a book I love, she plays the main character to high praise from its author.  Ultimately, I wish that Woodley had answered yes. We have come so far that it's easy to think that we're done. (I'm talking about the UK and the USA here.) But we're not. There's still the pay gap and the lack of women in politics and a whole stack of problems women face just for being women. Feminism is about changing that. (There are various ideas within feminism on what counts as inequality, why it exists and how to address it, but the main point stays the same.)

Woodley's comments make it clear that (despite Beyonce etc.) it's still fairly common to think men and women have the same inherent worth, but edge away from the word "feminist." It often comes along with the sentiment that since women have more rights now equality has been achieved. Labelling yourself a feminist means actively announcing that you think this isn't the case. Hopefully, this prompts other people to explore the reasons why. By saying that you aren't a feminist, because you "love men" the word feminism is unfairly tainted. That keeps people away from projects helping women, because they rightfully use words like feminism, sexism and patriarchy.