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Nervous Blogger

Posted By Sahib Simran Kaur Khalsa
Sun, Feb 9 2014 at 6:52 PM

    These past few days have been an introspective roller coaster for me. How do I choose a single topic for a blog that is going to remain interesting and fresh for an entire semester (or longer) if everything goes according to plan? My ideas are either too broad (world peace) or too narrow (cats) and it has been interesting trying to find in me the balance between academic and fun. 

    I have found that most of the things that I have been drawn to have had a twist of feminism in them so I have toyed with the idea of focusing on the medias portrayal of women and women in fiction in general, but I have to admit that social justice bloggers scare me. I desperately don't want to get sucked down that hole and I do not want my blog to become full of angry feminist rants. There is so much negativity around these things and I do not want to add to that. I would much rather write things that are uplifting and lighthearted and fun. I think that joy can be just as powerful, if not more, as anger. 

    So here I go tentatively dipping my toe into the blogging world. Lets go on an adventure to make people happy and send a good and uplifting message at the same time!

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 DISCUSSION
#1 POSTED BY guest guest, 02/09 7:01 PM

If the Internet has taught me one thing, it's that cats are in no way a narrow topic. ;)

 

-INtB

#2 POSTED BY guest guest, 02/09 7:03 PM

Oh, and if you're interested in pursuing the topic of women's portrayal in media, I'd check out the documentary Miss Representation (it's on Netflix). I feel like it avoids the negativity you're talking about, so it could be a starting place or a role model of sorts.

 

-IDtN

#3 POSTED BY Zoe Sera Goetzmann, 02/09 9:09 PM

Sahib- I think that you should go with your initial instinct on this one! Your idea about the media's portrayal of women would make a great project. Also, I completely understand your concerns about getting 'sucked down the hole of angry feminist rants' (as you put it). However, I think that you will be able to find a comfortable medium between the 'extremists' and the 'tamer bloggers,' but that is one of the great things about blogging! Blogging provides an array of different 'voices' for people (esp. women) all over the world, so I think by reading and responding to those different people, you will have a great dialogue to base your blog on! 

#4 POSTED BY Matthew Graham Silver, 02/09 9:12 PM

You could explore the way women interact with the web, in comparison to men/other genders. Remember when we read that article that mentioned that women were using the internet in different ways than men? You could explore that more deeply. You could also explore the phenomena that relate to female identity/presentation online. An example article: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GIRL

#5 POSTED BY Collette Sosnowy, 02/10 12:21 AM

Joyful Feminism! If you didn't already have a great URL, I would suggest you change it to that : ) But seriously, there IS a lot of joy and triumph in feminism and focusing on that (as well as critically interrogating that) would be a great contribution.

#6 POSTED BY Katherine Wilson Kurtzman, 02/10 3:50 PM

Being my roommate has probably shown you more of the dark and angry and ragey side of feminism than you ever wanted to see. I think joyful feminism is both a great and really under-represented topic.

#7 POSTED BY Collette Sosnowy, 02/18 2:25 PM

Upworthy.com has a lots of pro-women, pro-feminist videos. I would want you to think about the source (that is, what is Upworthy's focus) and how these videos are produced in your analysis, which goes for any sources you use. Calling attention to a different angle on public displays of feminism would supplement and complement rather than counter what we (unfortunately) think of as "angry" feminism. It's a different type of resistance.

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