The Tsaritsa Sez: Blogging and Narcissism, or In Defense of Style Blogs

The following may be a sensitive topic for some of you. If you easily get butt-hurt over silliness, you probably shouldn't read this post. What I want to talk about here is blogging and narcissism (the amount of times I have misspelled that word is too many to count), which I think pretty much go hand in hand.

Before you go off yelling at me about calling people names and making generalizations, let me just say that I am a blogger and this blog is narcissistic. Wouldn't it have to be to assume that anyone gives a crap about what I think, let alone would want to read my opinions and rants? The thing is to have a sense of humor about it.

I don't get offended if I write a post that receives no comments. That's the way it is sometimes. I also don't go around thinking I'm the shit, as Stacey thoughtfully put it, if I so happen to get a lot of responses on a post. It's just my blog (which I'm trying to use as a vehicle to employment opportunities) and it's just the internet. I'm not saying that all blogs are completely narcissistic, not at all. But there is a tinge of narcissism in each of them. Face it: narcissism is a part of human nature.

This post is a response to an assertion made by a full-of-herself blogger, who goes by the name of Indy Grrrl (IG), about people (though actually she focused on women) who blog about style. She condemned style bloggers for going to great lengths to copy the type of images seen in commercialized magazines. Because these bloggers try to get the perfect shot, IG thinks they're narcissists. Any more than she is? The whole post was rather whiney and ranty and seemed like it was running on haterade.

I personally love style blogs-- I think they're fun and I appreciate the photos these ladies take because they are often as artful as the outfits they put together. I'm not just saying this because I occasionally like to get dressed up and have my photo taken when Ben and I are out running around. I also like to take photographs of pretty things, or things that I find to be strangely beautiful, and include them on my blog.

I don't endorse commercialization, but I do find excitement in trying to do things differently, or at least in my own little way. It's my own perspective of art, and yes it is narcissistic. All art is narcissistic. But then again, you don't have to read this blog if you think it's distasteful. Just don't go around calling me and other bloggers who are just trying to share their vision with the rest of the world narcissistic, because you're doing the same thing yourself.

Here are just some of the gems from her post:

"Do these other women reminisce about the days they copied what they saw and read in magazines, re-packaged it as their own, and called it radical or unique blogging?" I wouldn't call what you do quite radical or original, my dear.

"But here's the problem, blogs are hardly reserved for writers anymore. Having a blog is like having a Facebook profile or twitter account. It cheapens the experience for serious writers." Yeah. Everyone and their grandmother has a blog these days, but it's been that way for a while. And just because you have a graphic of a typewriter on your blog doesn't mean you're a serious writer.

"Back to the posed images, the problem with this trend is the fact that anything can be crafted to look a certain way for an instant, and most of these women want a perfect and stylish look." When I have my photo taken I tend to not want to look like crap. Does that make me a narcissist? Or does that make me normal?

The person who wrote the rant is a lifestyle blogger, meaning she blogs about her day to day goings-on, the cute things she sees when she goes shopping, her nail polishes, the stuff she sells in her etsy shop, and other such things. You know, basically the same things she finds distasteful in style blogs-- that's what she blogs about. But because style bloggers photograph their outfits in a certain way they are therefore so much more vapid in comparison to lifestyle bloggers like her. Whatever.

I don't think I'm being defensive because I enjoy style blogs, but I am calling her out because she tried to make it sound like what she does on her blog is somehow more genuine or more worthy than anyone else who blogs. What makes her feel like she's the supreme authority on blogging and writing? And if you're going to be so judgmental about originality and creativity, don't you think it would be a good idea to have something other photos of OPI polishes to back that claim up?

I commented on her post because it made me angry. I cannot stand egomaniacs, and that is the picture she painted of herself in that post. In order to bring her back down to earth after all of that ego-inflation, I wrote "Blogging in general is pretty narcissistic. Just the notion that other people care what you do on a daily basis is narcissism, but this is the world we live in today."

She wrote back that "Blogging in general isn't narcissistic unless you make it that way by the things you choose to display. Narcissism is all about love and obsession for yourself; it has nothing to do with others, and how they feel about you." Okay. But that doesn't really make sense, and is also working under the pretense that there are a great number of people out there who are trying to manipulate others into believing something that isn't true. That just seems incredibly stupid to me.

I don't think the point of doing editorial-type "photo shoots" with our boyfriends, friends, or tripods means that we're trying to pretend to be someone we're not, nor does it mean that we are trying to trick the people who read our blogs into thinking that we live a more lavish lifestyle than anyone else.

I really enjoy going thrift shopping and getting great deals on unique items of clothing. I also equally enjoy putting these items together to form a stylish outfit that I can wear out and feel proud about. To document this experience, I often ask Ben to take a few photos just so I can show the people who are interested in my quirky sense of style. There is never an intention to deliver a false impression of who I really am.

And yes, I really did do my grocery shopping in this skirt and blazer ensemble. So what? A lot of people do theirs in their pajamas. And seriously, don't you think it's better to have a sense of humor about your narcissism than to be in denial about it? And, as Stacey (my voice of reason and internet friend) put it, "Doesn't it make her more narcissistic to believe that what she's doing is miles above other bloggers? Just me?" EXACTLY!

I was curious to hear what other people had to say on the topic, so I took the question to Twitter. I posted this question "True or false: Blogging is narcissitic" (yes, I misspelled it in my original tweet, haha) and got a multitude of replies: