When Claire and Nic from Agent Smyth wrote a post discussing whether beauty bloggers had to be beautiful, I just knew
I had to share my opinions on this, too.
Because although I feel as though I was rather late to the party of vloggers and bloggers, I've been watching/reading them for long enough to know what I really think about the whole 'beauty' situation. It seems as though many of the 'bigger' bloggers are all beautiful, all have this wonderful life that resides around blogging, being sent free products and eating out, and it's easy to forget that they have normal, every day lives, too. It's just that they're absolutely stunning alongside this. But there are also many successful bloggers that are slightly older, or don't have picture-perfect skin, or teeth that aren't pearly white and super straight, and that's okay, too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is; I read blogs by all women and men of all ages, backgrounds, skin types and what can only be called 'physical attractiveness'. But do I favour those that I deem more beautiful? No. Not in the slightest.
It's difficult to write a post about successful bloggers and not mention the name 'Zoella'. It's very obvious that Zoe is incredibly beautiful and, props to her, very successful. But do these go hand in hand? In my opinion, no. I started reading her blog a few years ago and I remember that the very first post I read did not include a photo of her, and I can remember thinking 'where is that follow button?!'. I enjoyed reading her blog for her. I liked the way she wrote, her choice of topic and her blog layout. When I finally saw her (I think I found her on YouTube shortly after) I was, not ashamedly, taken aback by quite how beautiful she is. But that was not the reason I kept going back to her blog. Some psychological theorist may tell me that it subconsciously made me return to Zoella.co.uk, but I honestly do not think that my reading enjoyment had much to do with her beauty.
I don't feel comfortable mentioning any more names - Zoe has kept her success very public so I feel happy enough to chat about her - but there are other bigger bloggers that are beautiful that I keep up with, too. However, if they were beautiful but wrote badly written posts, I would be the first to unfollow them. Whats the point of reading someone's blog when they haven't put in the effort to write it well, or have terribly edited photos? No matter how beautiful someone is, if I want to read about something, I want to read it in a quality blog post.
But there are also bloggers that I wouldn't know if I saw them in the street. These are the ones that don't often, if ever, show their face in their blog or social media - however, I absolutely trust their opinion, wholeheartedly, just as much as I would do if they had a 'beautiful face'. Clair and Nic mentioned this in their post and it's something that I really found myself nodding my head to when I read it. Again, without mentioning names, there is a particular blogger who never ever shows her face, but she is the first thing I type into my web address bar when I turn my laptop on. Her reviews are well written, quick to the point with fantastic photography. She inspires me to be a better blogger. I've never seen what she looks like, but I don't care, either. I just friggin' love her blog.
What I do feel I need to do is address this idea of 'beauty'. It is very much true that the idea of beauty is so subjective and it really is down to personal preference. An example of this is that I personally love tattoos and think they're beautiful, so if I see someone with a tattoo, I think they're good looking, whether they be male or female. I know that some of my friends detest tattoos and wouldn't dream of getting one, let alone thinking another person is attractive. The point I'm trying to make (in a very long-winded way) is that there is no way that we, as a human race, can collectively have the same idea of beauty. There are too many of us to all decide on one trend, or look, or size, or shape, or eye colour, hair colour and so on. It would be bloody boring if we all thought beauty was the same thing; all aspired to be 'beautiful'. We would literally all look exactly the same, be attracted to each other and frankly that would just be weird.
So I use the title of this post loosely. And the answer to the question is most definitely no. I'm a person that likes faces, all types of faces, but when I'm reading blogs, I really don't care what the writer looks like. When you read a book, you don't necessarily know what the author looks like, do you? If you're reading a romance novel, only to find out that the author is not 'beautiful' or what you'd imagine them to look like, would you then scrap the book and claim it's badly written? No. Well, I don't think you would, anyway. So why should we do this to bloggers?
Please leave your views, I'd love to read them.
A bit of a controversial post for me, but I felt the need to express my opinion.
It's jumbled, I know, but I write things as I think them - whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know.
But at least my posts are always genuine, I guess! :)
Daniela xo
