Don’t Bother Mommy She’s Rabid Right Now

03.14.10

Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand was printed today at the New York Times. You don’t have to read it. It’s written with a self loathing pen. Jennifer Mendelson may understand writing, but she clearly doesn’t understand what a conference is. Bloggy Boot Camp is different from other conferences in that it’s attendees are a homogeneous group, but aside from that it offers a good mix of education and networking.

Ask me why I’d get a babysitter for my kids (my mother is the babysitter don’t froth), fly to Vegas at noon, keynote a small but important conference, and fly back in time to tuck my kids in?

Ask me. Because I’ll tell you.

Tiffany.

Tiffany is the reason why I’d drop everything and break my two biggest rules of blogging.

I don’t work free
Blogging doesn’t take away from family time

When Tiffany asks me if I can give up a day of my life, talk to a room full of my peers and not get paid I squee in delight. That woman gives more than she takes, and when I get a chance to give back, I do.

So, when an article hits the New York Times talking about the silliness of Mommy Blogging, and I’ll grant you there is silliness, I take great offense. I don’t take great offense because it’s so wholly inaccurate, truth can be found and manipulated anywhere. 24,000 hits to a single post on any website matters, it doesn’t matter if it’s for your tutu. Moms talk about tutu’s, when did that become a revelation?

I know the author is a blogger too, and there’s some self loathing that comes along with being a Mommy Blogger. I’m a Mommy Blogger, I get it. The pseudonyms in use are ridiculous, but that’s something we talk about inside our community, not outside.

If you’re a Mommy Blogger get used to small doses of ridicule. They will come from two sides, people who don’t have kids yet and think we are silly (trust me they mock us in real life too) and parents who don’t blog, and are a bit jealous. That’s all.

She’s right in that many of these women will never make “real money” with blogging, but when my kids were tiny a few boxes of diapers or an extra stroller would have helped us out quite a bit. The reality is that your blog can serve as a resume. When people ask me if I have one I just point them here. If you think you want to make money with your blog, or just create a place online to showcase your talents Bloggy Boot Camp will help you.

I resent the title. Since the New York Times has it’s very own Mommy Blogger in Lisa Belkin, I can’t help but wonder if she, too blanched a little.

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  • http://ohmyheck-tic.blogspot.com Krista

    I think some of these paid journalists get their nose out of joint with mom blogs because we must threaten them a bit. Why else would they have the need to knock us? The difference is people go to our blogs because they enjoy reading them, not because they happen to be in print with a lot of other things. For a lot of us, writing is a natural talent and it’s nice to find friends in the blogosphere that we have things in common with. We can be true to ourselves in our blogs, not at the hand of an editor telling us what we can and can’t say. Blog on, Baby!

  • Sandra

    I read the article and I believe that Jennifer was not attacking mommy blogs. You are reacting to the title and the picture which were provided by NY Times. She was making commentary on the phenomena of mommy blogs and the growing necessity to brand yourselves. Your readers complain about women attacking other women, but are they not doing the same to her. This virile attack on her needs to stop.

    Think about where the idea of professionalizing motherhood is coming from. We have such high expectations that we receive from the media and from each other and mommy blogs sometimes perpetuate this insane competition, and the branding of motherhood is buying into the capitalism regime and colonizing motherhood as a political and economic venture.

    Whatever happened to being a mom and raising good kids with common sense without condemning other women. I have seen the “mommy war” mommy blogs, and they are brutal. Horizontal violence will not solve the problems that mothers are facing such as lower wages than their counterparts, lower respect, and perceived incompetence in the workplace. We are also paying e cost for leaving the market place to raise children and suffer a motherhood wage penalty while our male partners are experiencing fatherhood rewards.

    Am I against mommy blogging? Absolutely not! I believe that it is a powerful outlet for women that helps with social networking and builds community. I just want to put some perspective on the situation.

  • http://mamanista.com Candace

    I think, perhaps, for those who are wondering why this not wholly inaccurate, had some good points, article is rankling it has to do with the fact that this is the tone ALMOST EVERY mainstream article about moms who blog has taken. Would they speak this way of male bloggers? If you see a conference with a little squeeing and a lot of serious and uplifting work being done, is it factual to lead with the squeeing? But is it accurate and truthful? Picking and choosing one’s examples and crafting a tone to match a stereotype is not worthy of these papers of record. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

    There is *nothing* wrong with tutus–I have fun crafting and I represent several of those thousands of hits on that tutorial. But that example was chosen out of many, and presented in such a way, to imply that the things moms do are frivolous. And that they are taking away from the raising of children and keeping of house.

    At what point will the WaPo or the NYTimes bust out the article about the women who have built a valuable business, saved lives, created social change, etc. with their blogs?

    How about, “Come Here, Sweetheart, and See What Mommy is Doing–We’re Changing the World!”

  • Steven

    Jessica, You aren’t terribly bright. You clearly did “get” Jen Mendelson’s NYT piece. Grow up and leave Jennifer alone. You are obviously so caught up in your narcisstic world of Mommy blogging that you weren’t able to discern Jennifer’s lighthearted look at a new and interesting cultural trend.

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