blogs change lives (a true story)
I love blogs.
Like, I really, really love blogs.
Blogs are my primary source for pretty much everything (okay, maybe not everything in the world, but you know). I read upwards of forty on a daily basis, from LOLcats to serious news sites. In fact, I get almost all of my news from blogs. I don’t read the newspaper, or traditional news sites, or watch local at 10. I listen to a little radio in the car – mostly NPR – but half of the time my radio isn’t even on. I tend to be quite skeptical of and/or critical of and/or bored by traditional media sources.
But I will read the hell out of some blogs.
If you twisted my arm and made me pinpoint the one thing I value most about blogs, I would tell you that it’s impossible, because there are just so many things. But if you twisted a little harder, I’d yell “Uncle!” and say that, for better or worse, it’s that blogs give a voice to people that may not otherwise have one. Anyone can start a blog. And anyone can start a blog about anything they want and say whatever they want in that space. Sure, there are downsides to this – tons of crap to filter through, plenty of hate speech, lots of things that maybe shouldn’t be made public. But they also provide a platform for otherwise marginalized people. Things that are not often broadcast in traditional media - feminist discourse, anti-racist pop-culture critique, fat fashion – get a chance to thrive in smart, hilarious, and even heartbreaking ways. And people listen. They listen, and they join in, and sometimes, their lives change because of it.
Three(ish) years ago, I stumbled across a blog called Shapley Prose. Founded by Kate Harding and written by her and a few other brilliant women, Shapley Prose is, in very simple terms, a body acceptance blog. Three(ish) years ago, I was decidedly not accepting of my body. My relationship with my body was more like a constant state of denial and anger and desperate desire for change. I had, over the years, cultivated such an intense dissatisfaction with my own physical being that I was pretty sure I would never be happy with myself. I needed a change, for sure, but not the physical kind.
Three years later (and twenty pounds heavier), I can say that my entire way of thinking about myself and about bodies in general has been turned completely upside down. I’m happy with myself, y’all. And more to the point of this post, that happiness is a direct result of blogs. Shapley Prose and a plethora of other body acceptance sites have given me a freedom I’m not sure I could have achieved otherwise. Because in the “real world”, in traditional media, in my day-to-day life, body acceptance is not the norm. But here in the pixelated realm of online writing, where anyone can say anything, there is a vast array of life-altering information and communities of people talking about things that will totally and completely blow your mind.
You may not need body acceptance, or anti-racist pop-culture critique, or even LOLcats (although, seriously, who doesn’t need LOLcats?), but I’d say there’s a good chance that there’s something in the blog-o-sphere for you. It’s just that immense. And if there isn’t, you can start your own blog, find your own voice, speak your own mind. Because anyone can say anything here. And I can’t think of any other place in the world where that is so true.
Posted by erin | 6 comments
