Radical, mommy!

There's a lot to dissect about the mommy blog. For starters, what exactly is a mommy blog? It seems like a simple enough question to answer. But is it a mommy, who happens to blog? Or is it a genre with specific content and form - can you only be a mommy blogger if the focus of your blog is motherhood? If we manage to figure out what a mommy blog is - and who mommy bloggers are - we can begin to look at the discourse around the term mommy blogger - a complicated term that is simultaneously viewed as condescending and problematic, but also useful for marketing purposes and creating a community amongst mommy bloggers. We can also look at mommy blogging as an industry. Take, for example, the Market Mommy blog, dedicated to helping mommy bloggers market their blogs so they can make a profit by blogging. We can then look at the audiences that consume mommy blogs. Why is it that my dear friend and myself (both childless) have a bit of a mommy blog obsession?

All of this interests me, but for now I'm going to leave it behind. In 2005, blogger Alice Bradley rocked the blogging boat when she stood up at the BlogHer conference and said, "Mommy blogging is a radical act." While I would love to be able to agree whole-heartedly that mommy blogging is, indeed, radical, I don't think I can do that yet. Some mommy bloggers are certainly radical. But some reinforce the hegemonic narrative of motherhood, painting an unrealistic picture that other mothers have little hope of living up to. I don't think that I'm ready to agree (all) mommy blogging is radical, but (all) mommy blogging isn't not radical. We need to step back and complicate Bradley's statement.

What I'm really interested in is how mommy bloggers represent themselves - how, through the blog, they're able to create a controlled identity they present to the public. Through the lens of representation, I think we can start to tackle the question of whether or not mommy blogging is a radical act. As Stuart Hall explains, "Representation is the production of meaning through language." Does the language (written word, as well as photographs) of mommy bloggers challenge the status quo, or does it reinforce it?

Hall goes on to explain that, "Producing meaning depends on the practice of interpretation, and interpretation is sustained by as actively using the code - encoding, putting things into the code - and by the person at the other end interpreting or decoding the meaning." What I hope to consider in my next posts is what it is the mommy blogger is encoding. Are they encoding the notion of motherhood with idyllic beach scenes and adorable, well-behaved children, or with a list of indignations? If mommy blogs are able to re-encode our narratives of motherhood then that, my friends, is a radical act. But if they reinforce those narratives, it's anything but. What do you think? Can something called "mommy blogging" ever truly be radical?

Disclaimer: The two blogs I am focus on for this project are by no means reflective of the unbelievable range of mommy blogs out in the big ole' blogsphere. They are two blogs I have (mostly) enjoyed reading in the past, and are both quite popular. I'm looking at popular blogs because they reach a relatively large audience and they are also more likely to be crafted for consumption by the public. The thoughts contained in these musing are my opinions and I am not trying to suggest that any of the women are good or bad mothers, or good or bad people. They just happen to write the blogs I've chosen to use as texts.