In a phone conversation with a friend today, I realized that women are hyper-conscious about looking good to each other. By looking good, I don't mean appearance. I just mean we want things to look a certain way, to be put together either on ourselves or in our homes.
Think about this. The last time your friends came over for game night, movie night, cocktails, etc did you just relax all day and then welcome them with open arms or did you spend all day (or week?) cleaning and prepping so that everything would be perfect? Your kids would be bathed and well dressed, your husband would be too, your house would look it's best - clean, organized, the decor well thought out.
In blogland we post pictures of how our projects turned out, how the house looks when we
As I spoke with my friend the words came out of her mouth, "I wouldn't want to subject you to this" as her house is mid-pre-baby remodeling. She was concerned that the dust and mess of all that remodeling in progress would look bad. And look, I get it. After being gone for five days my house is a wreck. We still haven't finished unpacking, laundry is sitting in the washer wet because I haven't gotten back to it and there are boxes that need to be hauled to the dumpster from two weeks ago. I wouldn't want anyone to see that either. It would make me look lazy, like I didn't know how to keep house or take care of my husband. And I clean, really, I do. I even have a daily job chart that I need to share with you all. And it -does- work for me.
But the truth is, life often gets in the way. Be it work, kids, family obligations or something else - sometimes things just don't get done. And there's nothing wrong with that. Only, we as women often fall into the trap of having to look perfectly put together; to continue the perfect image of Super Woman. I think in some ways it might be more difficult for us bloggers. We see gorgeous "afters" all the time and that little green monster creeps in and suddenly we have to hide the truth, our dirty little secret - sometimes "After" doesn't last that long. Sometimes we have to say, "I really don't want you to have to see this."
So here's what I'm thinking. We spend a lot of time on link parties showing off our best. Why not have a link party showing off our reality? Just once, let's show off what our lives are -really- like when the camera is turned off. Let's be proud of it; that our life isn't always put together and "After"-worthy because we actually
-live- our lives.
Next week I'm hosting my first link party. And I want you to share your reality. It's time we stopped feeling like crap just because things don't look perfect all the time. It's time to stop feeling bad about ourselves because our normal doesn't look like someone's after picture. It's time to let go of the blogland jealousy we sometimes feel because we don't have the same number of followers or because our projects don't look as professional as someone else's. It's time to get real.
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