I noticed the very groomed and potentially airbrushed photoshoots of girls using technology in their bedrooms: and this is my resistance to it!I blog from my bedroom. I always have, and in this particular instance, I am ready for bed and in my pajamas!
This is the reality of blogging-You can do it from anywhere and it is not restricted to business hours and does not require a uniform. I share information, ideas, photos, opinions and recipes online all the time. The fact is, I can do this from the comfort of my home-I can make money, produce content, contribute to the web, and create a space for myself in the 'public sphere' from my 'private sector'. This blurs the boundaries of the public/private divide that has been asserted to why research on girls has been only recently established.
I assert that the popularity and prevalence of internet technology in the home is a huge step in the direction of girls creating their own presences in very public ways in the very publicly accessible domain of cyberspace. Girls are literally creating space for themselves and for their realities through contributions to blogs, online zines, in their comments of links and participation in online gaming. This space is progress. It is empowered. It is girls engaged! And in relation to our Driver reading, the internet is a place to find alternative messages about girlhoods, the bedroom where these messages are both produced and consumed; a contrast to television where girls are only the consumer, and in no way in control of making the messages about girls and their experiences. The internet technology available is a venue to talk back to messages and popular constructs girls, by girls for girls.
Blogging is both valid and valuable.
Blogging happens! And it happens in my bedroom! I am not being sexualized, I am being subjective! We are creating inclusive alternatives for girls that they, themselves can contribute to, and it is all done from the comfort of my room!
Pretty powerful position to be in, if you ask me!
"Boys are thought to occupy the public world for their leisure and subcultural activities, while girls are thought to resort to the private sanctuary of the bedroom where they read teeny bopper magazines and indulge in fantasies with their girlfriends about rock stars and Jackie pin-ups" (McRobbie 1991: 72).
ReplyDeleteI love this Erin! I remember you saying how you created your first blog because you were tired of reading fashion blogs. What we are doing is resisting the reality portrayed in the above quote. This technological shift in bedroom culture is uniting the private and public spheres so girls can create alternatives for other girls to be inspired to live out who they truly are instead of subscribing to and reproducing heteronormative cultural clichés!!