Entry #1. Thoughts About Blogs

                            

It has been very hard for me to find a blog I really like. I'm still not sure I have! A lot of them seem to be very superficial, mostly talking about celebrities, beauty standards, movies, etcetera. Blogs like Elle and People that only write about the newest trends and celebrity gossip seem unnecessary and meaningless, and yet, somehow, they appeal to so many. Even blogs like  The Skinny Confidential, which is more of a personal profile, mostly talks about trending topics and beauty products. This is not to say all blogs are bad. Some blogs are very informational and help people, and I did manage to find a few that peaked my interest. 

Pumps and Iron is a blog about wellness and health. It even has a section on mental health which in that way keeps things real and honest. The blog is organized into different sections with headings such as workouts, recipes, aromatherapy, health, lifestyle, and a section about the writer. The tabs at the top of the page make it very easy to use and to understand. The writer seems to emphasize working out for health reasons rather then to achieve a perfect body. She also goes into depth about her struggles and how she worked through them. Her purpose really seem to be empowering others rather than giving people reasons to feel negatively towards themselves. She also has a very friendly writing tone and writes in a way that is very comfortable.

I also was interested in Wired, which is a very well known informational blog and is also a magazine. It is organized into tabs at the top titled Backchannel, Business, Culture, Gear, Ideas, Science, and Security. The rest of the organization of the blog is honestly a bit confusing, but for the most part it is easy enough to navigate. I found it very refreshing to have such a widely known blog write about such educational yet still engaging and interesting topics. The purpose of Wired is to educate and inform the public, and it maintains a mostly serious tone throughout the blog.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, The Skinny Confidential is another blog I read about, and it is not a blog I particularly like. It is divided into groups at the top titled Home, Lauryn Bosstick (the creator of the blog), Beauty, Realness, Recipes, Body, Shop, Podcast, Book, YouTube, and Ask. It is very well organized and visually appealing; however, it makes me uneasy. Everything on the blog page looks Barbie styled, which is a toy that has classically been known to set unnatural body standards. In addition, the message behind Bosstick's content isn't much better. In a way it could be compared to Pumps and Iron, who both talk about health and workouts. However, the contrast is that it seems to only be about how to improve your looks and how to get a "better" body. After looking at the blog, I left the page feeling discouraged from seeing all the things I should change about myself and all the things I should buy. In the end, I'm not completely sure what the author's purpose is: it may possibly be to motivate people, but it could also be a way to make more money. 

All in all, my conclusion about blogs is that there is both motivating content out there for readers and also content that is just for the sake of publicity. Who am I to judge or jump to conclusions about someone else's writing intentions?