Op-Ed

Would you deny someone a platform on which to speak? Would you close your ears and avert your eyes to a voice because of the way it is transmitted? Would you refuse to offer your opinion for fear of being overtaken by the multitude of words already spoken? Do you balk upon entering a bookstore, overwhelmed and thus deterred by the sheer number of pages filled with words squeezed on the shelves?

Is entering the blogosphere, as reader or writer or both, any different?

Whether bookstore, airwaves, cinema house or blogosphere, people create common plateaus upon which to connect and live out their fantasies—or in some cases, watch them unfold before their eyes as an outwardly passive observer.

But blogs are different than other mediums, requiring nothing more than a desire to see one’s ideas or photographs in a place available to the public—that, and basic computer literacy and access. For anyone living in the United States, this desire is not akin to reaching for the moon.

Personal blogs, functioning as public repositories for an individual’s “shoebox” of memory objects, have a significant role in contributing to this collective identity.

People read and experience life through an already constructed framework of reference, dwelling place or ideology. These worlds are occupied and shared everyday with those at work and at home and at the store. Blogs have the ability to create these dwelling places in a less ephemeral manner—as symbols and as commonplaces upon which people in varied geographic locations, occupations and ages may converse. They function the way any newspaper or special interest magazine would, providing a temporary fantasy world in which to escape for a momentary lapse in reality-based spatial orientation. Indeed, the images transport the viewer to a place of beauty, of chicness, of shine and silent charisma, or to a world of high drama, international intrigue, war and other larger-than-personal-life narratives.

Like a camera projects film onto a blank canvas, blogs are a public screen onto which people’s fantasies shine. They out the mind’s inside with pages and pages of fairytale and of desire and fulfillment. Pages and pages offering a moment’s respite from a stilled dullness, perhaps from sitting inside before a computer screen or from a windowless room, perhaps from a lonely isolation. Pages and pages of mind, not body… though sometimes visualized in the form of a body.

This place, the blogosphere, sounds like a multitude of voices joining to produce the hum of human consciousness; images and words and symbols flowing as a river does, its current strong with thoughts added every second.

So, why is the blogospehere important? Why listen to the voices, some more polished than others, of bloggers? Should we feel the pang of voyeuristic unease at reading through others' personal musings on life and art and love?

Of course not. Blogs are presented in a semi-legitimate medium, the blogosphere, where published and public word is available at the push of a button--no editing necessary. Poetry and literature are similarly personal, the authors bearing their innermost thoughts in an attempt at truth. Using language, we attempt this same grasping at truth each day, knowing the words we use may never completely or exactly encapsulate what we mean. So we may choose to reference a visual—photo, painting, sculpture, newscast, film—to move our audience closer to this truth or point. Bloggers do the same thing, only permanently and for a larger public.

Perhaps the very number of individual bloggers illustrates a fundamental part of human nature: the desire to be recognized by the other, even if that other is oneself. Aspirations, hopes, are putting confidence in ephemeral ideas—things that have yet to become reality for the dreamer. And they are fueled by the few who've found a calling from this method of self-creation, or the possibility that you might just be the first.

In the blogosphere there is an opportunity to both listen and be heard. A vacant space for creativity, it provides for fresh, uncensored voices. Herein lies a huge possibility for open conversations and new ideas, unmediated by an elite group and decided upon by a citizen audience.

Blogs are a powerful tool that provides a space to cultivate voice, idea and opinion on a public scale. Why wouldn’t we listen? 

Minor Analysis Paper, Part I

When it comes to the topic of personal [style blogs or street-style] blogs, many will readily agree they provide a means of self-expression and communication, sometimes even stimulating conversation and interaction within a particular community[1]. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of the degree that such a heightened individualistic pattern of oftentimes one-way communication becomes socially isolating, encouraging the development of an individualistic identity[2]. Some are convinced that online networks can positively affect the individual’s community involvement, where participants in any particular community can extend their conversations. Whereas others maintain that the personality characteristics distinguishing most bloggers from non-bloggers, such as Openness to New Experience and Neuroticism, might lead to consequences such as “increased private self-awareness”[3].

             In order to explore the validity of either claim concerning an individual’s intention behind personal blogging, it is necessary to examine examples of blogs that fall into this category. Not all blogs are meant to function in such a blatantly self-serving manner; the New York Times and other major publications use blogs to further specified conversations ranging from music to food to foreign affairs, focusing on news items instead of intensely self-revealing photo and journal-style entries. Ironically, in a blog entry for the NY Times “Medium” blog which turns a critical and curious eye towards the media, Virginia Heffernan writes about two specific street-style blogs that have gained considerable praise and a large audience: The Sartorialist [authored by Scott Schuman] and Garance Doré[4]. Heffernan argues that blogs of this caliber function the way any haute fashion magazine would—they provide a temporary fantasy world to which to escape for a momentary lapse in reality-based spatial orientation. Indeed, the images transport the viewer to a place of beauty, of chicness, of shine and silent charisma. They are the behind-the-scenes of magazine photos—by contrast staged and modeled by some of the very same girls and boys who appear on the street-style blogs. However, in the cozy context of off-camera or real life, the characters are somehow approachable, even if they incite a longing almost overwhelming enough to deter some viewers from returning.

Garance Doré, in the “about” section of her blog, amounts its beginnings to a desire “to do something more free, more spontaneous[5].” As a professional illustrator, she was looking for intimate contact with her readers, something that she readily found when writing “little snapshots[6]” of her life.

Scott Schuman’s “The Sartorialist,” which subtly greets the viewer with the statement: “Selected as one of Time Magazine’s top 100 design influencers[7],” is similarly focused on capturing his subject’s character through their dress, grooming and stance. However, as a veteran of the fashion industry [he worked in sales and marketing for high-end women’s fashion designers for 15 years], Schuman brings a more focused and critical eye to his photographs. His reasons for beginning the blog are less self-centered. Schuman’s goal was to shoot “people on the street” so as to give inspiration to other designers. “Rarely do [designers] look at the whole outfit as a yes or no but they try and look for the abstract concepts of color, proportion, pattern mixing or mixed genres[8].” So—as evidenced by his photography and sparse commentary—does Schuman.

Both bloggers create a common place upon which readers may interact with other style-minded individuals. These blogs are a repository for a specific cultural ideal: appearance. Heffernan alludes to consumerism’s current rhetorical situation, where one-time Style.com-devotees [Style.com is the online home of Vogue] find permanent residence. “Vogue’s Style File blog at Style.com, which features celebrities and breaking fashion news, rarely draws a single comment. By contrast, a Garance Doré post of an unnamed woman in houndstooth and stripes drew 78 comments, in French and English”[9]. Furthermore, Heffernan points to Paris’ one-time allure of luxury and extravagance as faded in “this moment of cultural history[10],” cautioning viewers against falling too easily into such tempting photographic magnetism.

            Even though these blogs are not focused on their authors, attention has nevertheless been directed toward the faceless creators. By aggregating the images of others, they have created—whether intentionally or unintentionally—a persona of their own. Some style blogs focus solely on creating this personal persona, such as the blog “The Cherry Blossom Girl[11].” In these instances, the persona actually becomes the common place for people to meet, exchanging small and praiseworthy remarks or inviting the blogger to visit the viewer’s own place of self-expression.  

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[1] “Interactive Online Journals and Individualization”

[2] “Interactive Online Journals and Individualization”

[3] “Who Blogs? Personality Predictors of Blogging”

[4] “Pop Couture”

[5] http://www.garancedore.fr/en/a-propos/

[6] http://www.garancedore.fr/en/a-propos/

[7] http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

[8] http://www.thesartorialist.com/bio.html

[9] “Pop Couture”

[10] “Pop Couture”

[11] http://www.thecherryblossomgirl.com/about/