Don't Bother Mommy, I'm just a B lister.

Confession: My Mommyblogger life is not about cool swag, free stuff, or building my 'brand'.

Leave it to me to come late to the party, right? If you'll notice, I always like to wait a little while when these big blogging controversies arise, before weighing in on them. I like heads to cool, and things to blow over just a touch. I know that I have written before about being a mom and a blogger. I am, after all, a mother of three who runs a blog. And while amid mommyblogger controversy #765, that doesn't automatically make me a "mommyblogger," I guess the fact that 95% of what I write being about my kids, does. So maybe as a mother, a blogger, an online presence, and a women involved in social media, I should be way more up in arms about the New York Times article on moms with blogs, but I am not.

Granted, the article left a very bad taste in my mouth. I definitely felt horrible for those women who, in opening up their community and offering a glimpse into their private and public lives, felt betrayed and vilified by the article and its author. The article, like so many other articles, news stories, talk shows, blog posts, and tweets, set out to discredit mom bloggers by making them look like pathetic desperate housewives, so badly in need of attention and a voice of their own, that they essentially sell-out their own kids to get it. You know, the kids without whom, they would not likely even be a part of the community to begin with. Okay, we get it. Mainstream media thinks mommybloggers are silly little wannabes. Gotcha. Thanks for the pat on the head. What I don't understand is why do we all really care? Is it because it makes us look bad? Is it because the allegations are (generally) untrue? Whatever happened to sticks and stones...? I believe that the work that we set forth and the community that we build together more than stands up to any petty criticisms that can can be spewed at us by "outsiders."

I don't think anyone likes to have their credibility questioned, their position undermined, or their motives scrutinized. In fact, it just plain sucks. But, we've all chosen to do what we do with the world watching. Truthfully, I could care less what the editors of the New York Times, the author of the article, or any reader who is so short-sighted that they take everything that they read at face value, has to think of me. Truly.

The world that we live in is full of defamation; full of discrimination. It is always going to be something . Flame wars. Mommy wars. Breast vs. bottle. Working moms vs. stay at home moms. I think the best use of our time, our community, and our online presence, is not worrying so much about what people are saying about us, but building bridges WITHIN this community. How about breaking down some of the stereotypes? How about bridging the gap between these feuding factions of the same core group? Perhaps then we can all have a better understanding of one another, and why each of us does what we do. How sad is it that we have a constant surge of infighting; of who is doing it better; who is getting more hits; who is getting calls from the big PR firms; and it isn't that which gets out attention, which makes us stop and say, "this is just so wrong!" No, what gets our attention is an essentially baseless article that, when boiled down, is merely one women's opinion.

But alas, what do I know? I have never given a damn about "building my brand", so I guess this article really didn't apply to me anyway.