Marthettes? Intimidatingly perfect bloggers?
This is odd – and more than a bit silly.
I’ll leave it up to our news director Martha Foley, who’s quite a proficient blogger in her own right, if she wants to comment on this. I just thought it would be too “meta” for her to get the ball rolling in the In Box.
The popular blog Jezebel is arguing/filling space today with:
“The New Decornographers: Bloggers with Perfect, Beautiful, Craftsy Lives”
Our moms had Martha [Stewart] to make them feel inadequate. But we have a whole new generation of perfection which is rapidly proliferating online. Let’s call them the Marthettes.
Writer Sadie Stein is bemoaning the appearance of perfect woman-hood on some interior decorating and lifestyle websites.
I think Stein and Jezebel deserve a hearty Bronx cheer. I mean, who cares if someone appears perfect? If their sofa cushions are just right and their kitchen/garden/bath is sepia-toned idyllic?
And why would a website with the tag line “Celbrity, Sex, Fashion for Women” make the moronic – and destructive – argument that some women appear perfect and other women are scrambling to keep up? Unless the site and the writer point out how stupid and pointless this kind of “keep up with the airbrushed, cyber Jonesette” nonsense can be. But that’s not happening on Jezebel today.
Yes, I’m pouring derision on the subject of my own posting. But I saw Jezebel‘s “Marthettes” term picked up by Schott’s Vocab in the New York Times and thought someone – even it’s just little old me – should speak up and say, “Pfpfpt.”
Blogs present only what their authors want their readers to see. Outside the frame of the perfect flower arrangement may very well be any of the above:
– past due notices for bills
– an overflowing sink of dirty dishes
– unmade bed with dirty laundry heaped on top
– broken dreams of their parents never taking them to disney world
and so on. I bet we all could formulate a set of photos that idealize our daily lives.
Didn’t realize you were a Jezebel reader, Jonathan…
Perhaps the griping about marthettes is, as Slate writer Emily Gould tells us, a ploy to exploit women’s insecurities and generate page-views:
http://www.slate.com/id/2259434
Hmmmm.
As a child of the 50s, a teenager of the 60s, a college student of the 70s and a mom of the 80s, I think I have survived enough defining cliches and broad generalizations to pass on this.
I’ve been in interior decoration business for a long time but now it’s getting “spooky”