Jennifer Barger’s “My Blog, My Self” in Friday's Washington Post Express asked a provocative question: “When style bloggers show off their clothes, is it inspiring or narcissistic?” After criticizing a few popular blogs, Barger concludes that fashion blogs are written by “little girls, all dressed up, with no place to go, staring into the mirror.”
Alternatives to Link-baiting
The tone of this article is very different from Ms. Barger’s other pieces on
Express, so it was jarring when Barger dismissed local gals Carlis and Katya of
Spicy Candy DC as members of an “echo chamber” composed of “clash-y, slightly trashy outfits in what seem to be Shaw alleys,” especially after Barger herself complains that style blogging is akin to an “online high school cafeteria.”
It’s easy to make fun of fashion blogs, but there are real benefits to the style blogging phenomenon that were not discussed, such as the diverse faces and body types they make available to their readers. In the blogosphere,
short girls,
curvy girls, and those in between are giving readers an accessible alternative to the cookie cutter body type splashed across popular print magazines. You don’t have to be stick thin and 5' 10’’ with cheekbones of steel to represent fashion online-- you just have to be yourself, be honest, and be creative, and that’s pretty cool.
Entrepreneurship
What’s more, Carlis and Katya of Spicy Candy DC—along with many other locally-focused blogs—serve an important community function that giant news media corporations don't provide. Those two ladies are constantly partnering with small, local DC businesses to promote a
store opening here or
style a lookbook there. The fact that they take photos in "alleys" is far less meaningful to me than what they actually do with their blog.
Spicy Candy DC and Kelly Framel's
The Glamourai (also mentioned by Barger in a negative light) exemplify one of the most significant and exciting attributes of the fashion blogging phenomenon. These blogs serve as an empowering, entrepreneurial online space for women to promote their small businesses, their fashion skills, their writing, or their personal brand. This is the case for the vast majority of popular blogs in other categories (hello Seth Godin, Daily Kos, etc.), and fashion blogs are no exception to the rule.
