Pioneer Woman & Dooce: The Oprah Effect in Radical MommyBlogging

I like to read about women in media, par­tic­u­larly moth­ers in media both per­son­ally & pro­fes­sion­ally these are areas of inter­est to me. Per­son­ally because I am a mom. Pro­fes­sion­ally because I have an inter­est in the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of moth­ers in media reflect cul­tural ideas about moth­ers. I may be a new­bie blog­ger but I am not a new­bie on the dis­course about women in media. What I have been notic­ing is that lately there has been a boom on moth­ers as media moguls and media creators.

I wrote about this ear­lier this month dis­cussing the Rad­i­cal­ism of Mom­my­Blog­ging, based on sev­eral sources (as noted in that post) that I had come across this topic in. I was won­der­ing what it means to be rad­i­cal & I stand by the fact that more voices need to be part of the dia­logue about moth­er­hood. In that I also noted that there had been a lot of dis­cus­sion over com­mer­cial­ism in Mom­my­Blogs. Now it seems that there is another layer to the com­mer­cial­ism side that I don’t think has been as dis­cussed in the debate but per­haps it also allows for a dif­fer­ent form of rad­i­cal­ism. It’s moms as media moguls. I mean all out media empires.

Yes, I know there has been a recent blow-up on the whole too much PR or should I write the drive for PR tak­ing over life for Mom­my­Blog­gers (caus­ing a feel­ing of burnout). Mom­Dot has even orga­nized a black­out chal­lenge of no PR for a week. This only adds more fuel to the exist­ing debate over too much PR, who’s at fault for the feel­ing that PR is out of con­trol, or the way com­mer­cial­ism has become part of Mom­my­Blog­ging & if Moms in the Blo­gos­phere still have their authen­tic Mom vibe is even show­ing up in Newsweek & now The Wall Street Jour­nal has picked up on. I’ve read many blogs about the topic & I don’t think I have enough space to list them all, sev­eral are in my Awe­some Google Friends list (go check them out!).

How­ever, what I haven’t seen being dis­cussed very much is the grow­ing num­ber of women who are cre­at­ing media empires out of blog­ging. Women as media moguls in gen­eral is a pretty recent inven­tion. We can thank Oprah & her empire. She even helped the likes of Rachel Raymove into a whole new stratos­phere with her own empire and who is also all over the place these days. These women and their fel­low media moguls have their hand­prints all over the media, while main­tain­ing their own voices.

We have other women who cre­ated spe­cific empires that helped chal­lenge indus­try stan­dards about women as lead­ers we can­not ignore their con­tri­bu­tions, like Mary Kay Ash found of the Mary Kay cos­met­ics com­pany, and while many of these empires use media they are not solely focused on the cre­ation of media. We also have women who are involved as CEOs in large com­pa­nies break­ing glass ceil­ings, for exam­ple Indra Nooyi Chair­man & CEO of Pepsi Co., but again these women are not the cre­ators of these com­pa­nies. And again while these com­pa­nies engage media they do not have the sole pur­pose of cre­at­ing media.

The power the media has in our mod­ern world can­not be ignored. We come into con­tact with it daily, it helps to shape and inform our world­views. When women enter into help­ing cre­ate media they help to cre­ate a cul­tural rep­re­sen­ta­tion of them­selves and other women. Women who are blog­ging par­tic­i­pate in the com­mer­cial side, even if unin­ten­tion­ally because they are putting out their own views. Fur­ther, women do break down a bar­rier that has existed by when they engage the cor­po­rate world on their own terms offer­ing their own voices.

Essen­tially we are see­ing an Oprah effect in the rad­i­cal act of Mom­my­Blog­ging, it’s her effect on media that has changed the way women cre­ate media empires. It’s also impor­tant to note that Oprah has fea­tured many Mommy Blog­gers on her show as well. When we look at Mom­my­Blog­ging we see that a few names have being a lot of attention.

For exam­ple, Heather B. Arm­strong cre­ator of the blog Dooce was just named num­ber 26 on the Forbes List of The Most Influ­en­tial Women in Media, some­thing unheard of a decade ago. She has been all over the media and her blog has a loyal fol­low­ing that val­ues her per­spec­tive. The Pio­neer Woman, Ree Drum­mond, just launched an online cook­ing com­mu­nity called Tasty Kitchen, which accord­ing to Fed­er­ated Media had 6,900 new mem­bers in the first 6 days alone. Show­ing she is devel­op­ing a stronger online pres­ence by the day.

Each of these women have page views in the mil­lions on their respec­tive blogs, are rumored to being mak­ing mil­lions, and are branch­ing out every­where with their media influ­ences. Chances are in a year if your neigh­bor who can’t even turn a com­puter today doesn’t know who they are now she will know who these women are by sim­ply read­ing about them in reg­u­lar old print or see­ing them on tele­vi­sion. As their media influ­ence is still growing.

While I’m aware both Heather & Ree do not rep­re­sent the aver­age blogger’s reach, the real­ity is they are devel­op­ing media empires & in turn they show that the voice of Mom­my­Blog­gers can be far-reaching if they main­tain their own dis­tinct voices. There is the Momver­sa­tion, books being writ­ten from Mom­my­Blog­gers, and ad cam­paigns devel­oped based on their input. The media influ­ence of women and women who are moth­ers is start­ing to take hold.

It should be no shock that the FTC is get­ting involved in the PR moves that have hap­pened in blog­ging & that Moms are tak­ing heat for their roles. It also should be no shock that it’s the whether or not moms are sell-outs that is get­ting the atten­tion ver­sus moms as moguls & the power of the aver­age mom’s voice (which most of us still are, just aver­age moms, not moguls). Also, it should be no shock that there is more effort to con­trol what moms say about life, media, & what’s out in the mar­ket­place. It means that the big guys are get­ting ner­vous about the rad­i­cal shift in media that is start­ing to hap­pen. Yes, rad­i­cal. It is rad­i­cal that women are able to build empires & rad­i­cal that those who come from a per­spec­tive of Mom­my­Blog­ging are start­ing to move into this level of influence.

Now I am won­der­ing in all of this dis­cus­sion if maybe the big­ger ques­tion about com­mer­cial­ism that has now entered into the rad­i­cal­ism of Mom­my­Blog­ging isn’t whether to block it but how to use it? Women in the blo­gos­phere are cre­ators of media whether or not they real­ize, but they are. They deserve to receive proper pay­ment if they do work for com­pa­nies or become hot-spots for ads while they main­tain their voice. Also, women are chang­ing the pri­vate ver­sus pub­lic spheres of work fur­ther shift­ing con­cep­tions of work in this process. Time at home if it is work should be under­stand as such. If women do work and don’t receive proper pay­ment or give up the abil­ity to main­tain their own per­spec­tive, this isn’t rad­i­cal instead it is main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo of women being deval­ued for their con­tri­bu­tions to society.

More­over, Mom­my­Blog­gers can use media to offer their voices chang­ing the way busi­ness & cor­po­rate Amer­ica has looked at moth­ers as part of their demo­graphic. It’s in the dif­fer­ent voices that are being added daily to the con­ver­sa­tion on what it means to be a mom and a woman that there is amaz­ing poten­tial out there to change the dia­logue on moth­er­hood & women. Even if these voices don’t ever make money or if they don’t become media moguls in the long run their voices can shift the way busi­ness is being done & the way women as moth­ers are rep­re­sented because they are start­ing to really be heard. Their writ­ing, good qual­ity writ­ing, can move the the par­a­digm about moth­er­ing.  That alone is a rad­i­cal shift.

*I know the term “Mom­my­Blog­ger” is some­what con­tro­ver­sial; how­ever, I decided to use it because it’s what most peo­ple are famil­iar with.

Tagged as: dooce, media mogul, mom blogs, mommy blogs, oprah, oprah effect, radical, the pioneer woman