Femme Blog

According to some statistic that someone cited somewhere at some point, on the website 20something bloggers, there are 7,942 bloggers registered as members, and only around 900 of those members are males.

I'm left to ask the intellectually-stimulating question, "What the fuck is that all about?"

Seriously, sometimes I look at the 129 "friends" I have collected nigh these many months, and I feel like a total whoremaster, supervising my burgeoning, ballooning brothel. There's Laura the pilot, Mila with the roses popping out of her cleavage, Kate the poet, Sarah with the camera, Floreta with the vibrators, and, most recently, Leslie with the eye-patch. It's quite a collection of damsels, really. Any whoremaster would be proud.

There was a time where I felt selfconscious about having accrued so many BWB (bloggers with breasts) as online acquaintances, but I don't think I can honestly feel guilty about it due to the extreme saturation of the 20something blogging market by womenfolk.

It's interesting to note that, in the 18th, 19th and even 20th century, the vast majority of published writers were men, and that's no accident. The vast majority of book publishers and literary agents were men, too. It was not acceptable for women to write and publish material. Just ask Jane Austen, whose family was never quite thrilled about her professional aspirations.

Fortunately now, there are many, many women in the book publishing and literary agent industry. I should know, I've received rejection letters from most of them. So, with the increase in written, published work written by women, it should be no surprise that women are also taking the blogging world by storm.

My question is: why?

What is so appealing about tapping those deliciously manicured nails to the keyboard for women? Women have a reputation for being more sensitive than men, more open to revealing themselves and their inner feelings, and a whopping shitload of them were English majors in college.

So, is that it? Have I answered my own question? I don't know-- I don't think so.

There must be something about writing, about blogging, something about its freedom, its unemcumbered, unadorned form that appeals to women, but I don't know what it is. I guess that's why I have a comments section.

When I first started blogging, and for a while after, I didn't read any blogs. "I don't want to be influenced," I would say. "I want to be original and fresh." I worry about that a lot. If I'm going to play a part onstage, and another local company is doing the same show, I will avoid seeing the show at all costs, because I don't ever want to be accused of "copying" or "stealing," "mimicking" someone else's work. It's a youthful arrogance, a holdout from my younger days when I did copy others whom I admired-- and that fear of being caught nowadays petrifies me into almost total creative isolation.

Now, though, I read several blogs, and almost every one of them is written by a woman. I like women writers, because they are different than me. They are thoughtful, introspective and they are careful, considered, sometimes eloquent. They think about things I would never think to think about, and they open me up to different perspectives, and I appreciate that. I never thought I would like reading blogs, but I think I do. I guess I'm growing up a little.

When I write a play, I often struggle to create authentic female characters. Oftentimes they don't show up in my plays, because the challenge of writing honestly for a woman scares the piss out of me. I feel incapable and inept. The only woman I've ever included in a play who sounded true was my mother, because I couldn't get her wrong if I tried. There is a poignancy and a firm wisdom that I can only watch from a distance and appreciate.

I suppose, in the end, why there are so many women bloggers out there and so few male bloggers isn't really important. It's a fine discussion topic to start and in which to participate, but it doesn't matter much. We bloggers all bring something different to the table, even those of us who just post YouTube clips or pictures of cellphones encrusted with Swarovski crystals.