I frequently find myself having this conversation with people who've just found out what I do for a living. They ask, isn't writing for a women's blog ghettoizing? Shouldn't we just have blogs for everybody? Of course, this debate is both older and broader than the blogosphere. Critics have long asked why we have women's colleges, women's studies, awards just for women. Shouldn't women be equal players in a diversified world, rather than one divided up into compartments?

I'm always a little uncomfortable having this debate in the real world because I'm so obviously biased — this particular blog not only lets me write about feminism and Battlestar Galactica but actually pays me to do it, so even if sometimes I have to spend all night reading about Sarah Palin's energy policy (curse you, Lynn Vincent), I'm pretty pro-ladyblog. I do, however, understand some of the cons. The question of what's a safe space and what's a ghetto remains a concern, not just for women but for all marginalized groups. More specifically blog-related is the problem of the echo chamber. In a recent New Yorker article, Elizabeth Kolbert explained it thus:

Conservative blogs like Power Line almost always direct visitors to other conservative blogs, like No Left Turns, while liberal blogs like Daily Kos guide them to others that are also liberal, like Firedoglake. A study of the twenty most-visited blogs in each camp in the months leading up to the 2004 Presidential election found that more than eighty-five per cent of their links were to other blogs with similar politics. When the study's authors charted the links in graphic form, they came up with a picture of non-interaction-a dense scribble on one side, a dense scribble on the other, and only the thinnest strands connecting the two. In 2006, [author Cass] Sunstein performed his own study of fifty political sites. He found that more than four-fifths linked to like-minded sites but only a third linked to sites with an opposing viewpoint. Moreover, many of the links to the opposing side's sites were offered only to illustrate how "dangerous, dumb, or contemptible the views of the adversary really are."

Kolbert goes on to chart the role of such like-minded link-fests in making people's views more extreme, but there's something intrinsically sad about the compartmentalization of Internet speech as well. As nice as it is to feel comfortable with one's audience (though, with the presence of trolls, no blogger can ever feel too comfortable), it can sometimes be hard to find a place on the Internet where people with different opinions come together to talk rationally and learn from one another. Part of this is because the Internet can make an asshole out of anyone, but part of it is because the blogosphere encourages like to seek out like, and can sometimes feel like a whole bunch of separate choirs, each listening only to its own preacher.

But all that said, there are ways in which Internet speech is actually more open and free than earlier forms. In Planned Parenthood NYC's panel discussion a few weeks ago, Lynn Harris and her fellow panelists pointed out that blogs are the 21st-century version of 1970s consciousness-raising groups, except that they are public. You no longer have to personally know a feminist or drive to her living room to learn about feminism — you can access it anywhere there's WiFi. And what's more, you don't actually have to show your face. This is problematic, in that it allows people to say things they'd never say if they were actually personally accountable. On the other hand, it's liberating — the scared and unsure can expose themselves to new ideas and new politics slowly, without the barriers to entry that once existed. Sites may still link to like-minded sites, but Google makes it easier than ever to stumble across new viewpoints, and accidental enlightenment is more possible than ever before.

Because of these possibilities, women's blogs aren't just blogs for women. They're blogs about issues that affect women — issues as various as reproductive rights, healthcare reform, world affairs, and yes, Battlestar Galactica — for anyone who happens to read about them. Many of these readers are women, but many of them are men, and some of them — both male and female — are bound to be people who haven't thought much about feminism or women's issues per se before. Women's blogs can sometimes be echo chambers, but they can also reach a wide and diverse audience, some of whose minds will surely be opened by the experience. So I'm sad about the scaling-back of Double X, not just because some bloggers are likely to lose their jobs (an email tipster tells us associate editor Samantha Henig already has), but because it will mean fewer opportunities for women's issues to reach new readers. The Internet may be a divided and divisive place, but it's easy to move across its divisions, and a women's blog is really just a public space for women's concerns. With a smaller Double X, those concerns are a little less likely to be heard.

News About DoubleX [Double X]
Slate's DoubleX Online Site For Women To Shut Down [WebNewser]

Related: The Things People Say [The New Yorker]

A 2006 study showed 56% of blogs are created by women, and this created a a certain amount of buzz about the Internet as a new bastion of women's representation, in contrast to the old boys' club of the mainstream media. But according to a new Technorati report, 67% of bloggers are now men. As Marian Wang of Mother Jones points out, that's a worse imbalance than at American newspapers, where 63% of staffers are male.

So why aren't more women saddling up the WordPress pony? Dr. Melissa Clouthier has some annoying ideas! She writes,

When it comes the arena of ideas, the women who blog are not typical women. Over and over, the women who blog are tougher. Like the shotgun wielding Western expansionists of yore, women bloggers take shots and can shoot back.

I guess I could be flattered that Clouthier thinks I am some kind of Annie Oakley, but I'm more concerned that she thinks women who don't blog are wilting flowers. That said, I do agree with part of her explanation (despite the fact that she's defending conservative ladybloggers from "'enlightened' male liberal commenters and bloggers." She writes that "just about every conservative woman blogger, including me, has endured horrible personal, violent and sexual insults." And, she continues,

Most women simply do not want to put up with this garbage. They feel threatened and they worry about their safety and the safety of their children. Michelle Malkin had to actually move after her personal information was plastered on the web. She is a mother. She has children. There are nutjobs out there and in this business, there is a very real risk to personal safety. It's something guys just don't have to deal with as much.

I'm not a mother (and I do detect an unpleasant whiff of moms-are-special rhetoric in Clouthier's words), but I have felt unsafe as a result of responses to my posts. In general, both commenters and emailers are respectful, but I have been called some nasty names, as have other of this site's staffers. Are female bloggers more vulnerable to this type of harassment than male ones? Certainly men in the media receive plenty of threats, insults, and unconstructive criticism. However, I would wager that they get fewer comments on their looks, their weight, their sex lives and how all these things relate to their opinions. A female blogger, especially a progressive one, always gets a certain number of trolls who tell her she must ugly, lonely, and (horrors!) fat, and you don't have to be some kind of sissy to decide you don't care to subject yourself to this kind of hazing.

After this reasonably fair point, Clouthier goes off the rails into gender essentialism. She says,

In addition, women often don't like the intellectual jousting. Part of it is gender wiring. Men see verbal sparring as a testosterone-fueled challenge. Women see degraded communication and hostility. When they put an idea out there, it seems aggressive when someone rips the point of view to shreds. And, it is aggressive.

Emily Gould would disagree. On More Intelligent Life, the writer and occasional Jezebel contributor writes about becoming "the kind of person I can't bear: the female critic who despises any female writer who doesn't project what she feels is the accurate or ideal vision of modern womanhood." Maybe she just needs to get her "gender wiring" checked, but she writes persuasively about a type of girl-on-girl "intellectual jousting":

This critic believes it is her job to tear down women who are "off-message" because there is only so much publishing space allotted to women, and so more attention for them is less attention for her and other worthy types. This critic lives inside us all, but she is also embodied, occasionally, by real people. One of them, an online "feminist" columnist, once wrote a supposed defense of "women's voices" that dismissed something I'd written because the photos that accompanied the essay were of me lying (rather unprovocatively, to my mind) in bed. She'd said that the question wasn't why my voice was being heard–the implied answer being, presumably, my bed-lying ways–but why others weren't, "in a media landscape in which there are a severely limited number of spaces for women's writing voices."

Gould and Clouthier are alike in one respect: they both conceive of a special status for women's discourse. Clouthier apparently thinks women are naturally nice and non-aggressive (which: bullshit), but Gould's statement is more complicated. She sees the columnist she discusses above (that would be Salon's Rebecca Traister, and if putting feminist in quotes isn't a "joust," I don't know what is) as part of a kind of female representation police, a group that jealously guards a supposedly finite female canon against unworthy interlopers. Do these police exist? Maybe, kind of — but I think Traister's piece is far more than an attempt to kick Gould out of the sandbox. She wraps it up with the line, "So rather than being troubled by the fact that Gould [...] has the spotlight, why not question why so few other versions of femininity are allowed to share it?"

I'd say, rather than being troubled by the fact that women criticize each other, why don't we embrace it? Yes, some girl-on-girl criticism is a form of misguided feminist gatekeeping, and no, we shouldn't expect all women to offer a comforting vision of our gender. But women's criticism of other women is too often discounted as cattiness, as infighting — men's writing of the same stripe would often be said to present "ideological" or "political" objections. I understand that Gould is talking about a very specific form of criticism, but I'd like to be able to participate even in that form — taking to task someone's representation of "women like me," without feeling like I'm committing a special female sin. Women supporting each other is often held up as a solution to their underrepresentation in all spheres, and it's an important one. But we also need the freedom to speak out against each other when we want to, as men have always done. We need the right to be "tough," in Clouthier's words, without second-guessing ourselves — and without holding ourselves to special standards just because we're women. When we have that right, maybe the world of blogging — a very critical one, but productive nonetheless — will be more open to us.

Where Are All The Lady Bloggers? [Mother Jones]
Why There Are Fewer Women Bloggers [Dr. Melissa Clouthier]
What Are Women Fighting About? [More Intelligent Life]

The FBomb has been online since March, and through the summer, most of the posts were written by its 16-year-old founder, Julie Zeilinger. But as she told Nikki Darling, her goal was always to provide a space for young feminists to express themselves, not to be the sole voice on the site. She explained:

The fbomb doesn't actually have any "regular" writers (as of yet) — I take submissions from anybody who wants to post. That's how I want the fbomb to be different. It's not my blog. I may have started it, but I really want it to be open to all teenage feminists, give them a chance to say whatever they want.

In the past few weeks, the site has come closer to meeting that goal. Zeilinger still posts frequently, but there are more items written by other contributors. While the site drew some negative comments from adults making tired arguments about the definition of feminism early on, the commenters now seem to be a younger, yet still diverse, group that adds thoughtful discourse to the site.

Last week Zeilinger posted a question about dating sent to her by a reader named Tinnie, who said,

My mother never taught me how to test a guy for closeted sexism or male supremacy. I want to know if any of you younger feminists have a theory on how to address this and if it worked.

Among the many commenters who weighed in with their advice and shared their stories was a high school student from the U.K., a girl from the Middle East, college students, lesbians, older married women, and a male high school student who calls himself a feminist.

Other contributors have brought up issues that teens who are in high school or starting college deal with every day, but that adult bloggers may not address in a way that's relevant to teens. Nellie B wrote that she feels uncomfortable when her high school teachers call her "sweetie" or "hon." She says:

These uncomfortable "terms of endearment," as I suppose these patronizing monikers qualify as, are not meant to be degrading and uncomfortable. I'm sure the intent is that us gals should be flattered that we are called pet names. However, as I'd like to remind them, I am not a wife, girlfriend or daughter. Every student deserves to be addressed respectfully. Inappropriate affection should not be mistaken for respect. Notice, also, that male students are not called "honey" or "babe." No, if they are called nicknames at all, it is something like "buddy," or "pal"– something that signifies their status as an equal to the teacher.

A dance on Leah RD's third day of college led her to proclaim that "the 'grinding' phenomenon demands a discussion." She writes:

Let's be honest: grinding is basically simulated sex on the dance floor. I try to be sex-positive and am generally comfortable with open expressions of sexuality. But isn't dry sex in a public setting, and with someone who you've known for less than a week, just kind of awkward? For me, yes. Maybe for some it's not, but this questions leads to the broader idea of consent and its applications. Consent doesn't only belong in the bedroom; consent should follow ambiguity wherever it may lead, which, in this setting, is the dance floor.

Sheridan T shared a personal story about becoming a feminist after she realized she and her friends spent too much time trying to perfectly apply their makeup and attract boys. She said:

My mother was the epitome of the middle-aged feminist. She gently pushed to help me make the right decisions. But I didn't listen to her because she wasn't like me – she was old and wrinkly and had bad hair and too much cellulite. Or so I believed… And then it dawned on me. My mother is a beautiful woman. A few months ago, I read The Beauty Myth. And I cried. Because what I was living wasn't rewarding in the least. And then I realized that the friends I considered beautiful were also the most fucked up. They have perfect body and facial preportions, but they aren't happy.

Other posts highlight awesome projects other young women are working on. Diane A writes that she and fellow FBomb contributor Nellie B are in a Women's Advocacy Group at their high school in Maryland and shared photos (including the one at the top of this post) of some of the signs they hung up for their school's Homecoming week. She says:

Our decorations didn't exactly fit into the designated "Las Vegas" theme, but they definitely caused a stir... Little groups would gather between classes to read all the posters, and I heard a lot of people say things like, "Wow I had no idea." This hallway represents one aspect of our group's mission to make sure "feminism" is not a dirty word in our high school. Plus, in the first few days no posters were torn down and there was only one act of vandalism, which is definitely a record!

In an interview with Bust Zeilinger said she was inspired to start The FBomb because she enjoyed adult feminist blogs but felt they were missing the teenager's perspective. She explained:

I think in a lot of ways this is because most teenage feminists aren't as comfortable or confident in their feminism as older feminists are, and don't tend to put themselves out there as much, but that's exactly why we need the fbomb - so young feminists can be confident, express themselves, and so we can build a community.

As the blog attracts more contributors and commenters, it's becoming not just a place for young feminists to voice there opinions, but for teenagers to help each other figure out where they stand and how feminism relates to their lives. We hope to see even more teens - female and male - dropping FBombs in the future.

Speaking Of Heroes... An Interview with FBombs Julie Zeilinger [Nikki Darling]
How Do Young Feminists Make Relationship Possible? [The FBomb]
Dealing with "Terms Of Endearment" [The FBomb]
Grinding [The FBomb]
The Development Of A Feminist [The FBomb]
Homecoming Week Montgomery Blair High School Style [The FBomb]
The FBomb: A Blog Young Feminists Can Swear By [Bust]

Earlier: F-bombs: Feminist Teen Blog Starts Strong Despite Adult Sniping

Though The FBomb went online in March, it officially launched last week. The site is described as:

"A blog/community created for teenage girls who care about their rights as women and want to be heard. Young feminists who are just a little bit pissed off and very outspoken are more than welcome here."

According to a press release, Zeilinger is a high school sophomore at The Hawken School in Gates Mills, Ohio. "Thefbomb.org is for girls who have enough social awareness to be angry and who want to verbalize their frustrations about injustice in the world," she said. "It is loud, proud, aggressive, sarcastic...everything teenage feminists are and should be today." Though Zeilinger interned at the National Council for the Research on Women and posted on the organization's blog, the FBomb is an independent project which she created herself. Other bloggers posted today, but, up to this point, almost all of the daily posts have been written by Zeilinger.

The FBomb often links to Jezebel, Feministing, and other sites aimed at adult women, and covers similar topics, organizing the posts into categories including "pop-culture," "feminism," and "awareness." Recent posts range from an interview with Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor, to an essay on Lily Allen's feminist lyrics (despite the fact that she's never applied "the F word" to herself), and a gossip roundup of all the conflicting stories about Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Zeilinger concludes that post:

"since none of them are about Robert Pattinson falling in love with a young feminist blogger just by running into her serendipitously on the streets of New York, I can't care too much."

Zeilinger is a witty, engaging writer, and not just "for a 16-year-old." As the press released claims, she probably is the youngest feminist blogger in the country, and though we often write about what teenagers go through, it's interesting to hear the perspective of an actual teen girl. Especially since Zeilinger has a lot more insight into the lies pushed on teenagers than we did at her age.

In her critique of a show aimed at teenagers, she writes:

Because, let's all face it, our lives on average would make a pretty freakin boring t.v. show. WHICH IS ACTUALLY FINE, IT TURNS OUT. I hear all these teens bitching about how boring their lives are, because whether conciously or not they're comparing it to the lives of Gossip Girl and 90210 which just promote irresponsible promiscuity, drug use and other dumbass moves. We watch these shows and we roll our eyes because most of us realize that life isn't like that. But then we go and strive to match it anyway.

And in her post on whether or not girls should date boys who don't call themselves feminists she concludes:

For me, I don't choose friends based on their feminist status, and boyfriends go the same way. It takes people longer than others to see the light, or be secure enough with themselves to use a word that makes so many others uncomfortable. I can only help by teaching them about feminism and sharing my experiences. Maybe one day they'll identify as feminists, then again, maybe they won't. As a feminist, I'm all about choice.

Unfortunately, it seems right now the site's few commenters on the FBomb are adults. Below the post on feminist boyfriends, two adult commenters got into a lengthy argument about the modern meaning of the word "feminist" and, earlier today, something prompted Zeilinger to write on the FBomb's Twitter: "older feminist readers I'm a teen its for teens can't be perfect don't have a degree. get some perspective plz & stop writing mean comments!" But those arguments are bound to come up whenever feminism is mentioned, and even without a high school degree Zeilinger is doing excellent work. Hopefully, now that the site has officially launched younger readers will hear about The FBomb and it can grow into the "community for teenage girls" (emphasis ours) that Zeilinger envisioned.

The FBomb [Official Site]

Related: 16-Year-Old Feminist Launches 'The FBomb' Blog for Teenage Girls [PR Newswire]
Dads, Dudes, and Doing It [The National Council For Research On Women]
Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor: Interview [FBomb]
Lily Allen: Closet Feminist? [FBomb]
Robsten? Stewpat? [FBomb]
Another Teen Show Rant [FBomb]
Feminism And Dating [FBomb]
@the_fbomb [Twitter]

Earlier: Teen Feminists Drop "F-Bomb"

She writes,

I'm starting to think that Internet romances, including Mark Sanford's, are not romances between people at all. They're affairs with the Internet. Watch people who are newly in love, especially any kind of love that requires that the participants keep stealthy and apart, and they're all over their iPhones and Palm Pres. It's P.D.A. with P.D.A.'s. Romance seems to have become an online multiplayer fantasy-adventure game, no less thrilling than World of Warcraft, and open to all ages.

Ignore the lame jokes (from the Maureen Dowd school of technological humor), and she kind of has a point. The Internet, whether you use it to meet or just correspond with a partner, and whether said correspondence is adulterous or not, provides a whole new platform for romance. It allows lovers to communicate with far more frequency and granularity than physical dating affords. You might only see someone once a week — especially if you're not supposed to be seeing them — but in that time you can exchange thousands of e-mails, IMs, and Facebook messages (does anyone really flirt via Twitter?).

These modes of electronic communication don't just augment a relationship — they create a whole new relationship, parallel to and existing apart from any actual face-time. Anybody with both a computer and a heart has probably known someone who sends really charming e-mails but is a dud in person, and anyone who grew up with the Internet has probably had a few IM-only friends or more-than-friends. As Sadie points out, a correspondence can be as exciting as a meet-cute story, and Heffernan notes that frequent e-mailers tends to fall into a certain simpatico groove with one another.

But are they really "with one another"? Or are they just in a relationship with their chosen medium? Maybe a little of both. I know that when I'm stressed out, I find myself checking my e-mail the way others might reach for a cigarette, and I know that online communication itself can satisfy other cravings as well. Getting a lot of e-mail can make you feel successful and desired in a different way than locking eyes with a crush; quickly crafting a witty IM that you can refer back to later is different than simply telling a joke. Especially with the advent of Google's saved chats feature, all my online correspondence can now be archived forever. Critics say the Internet is ephemeral, but the typed word is now more indelible than the spoken one, and lovers can carry on a romance with their inboxes long after the actual affair has ended.

Of course, where there's a new platform for love, there's also a new platform for hate. People are notoriously willing to say things in, say, blog comments that they'd never voice to someone's face, and one reason advice columnists tell you not to break up with someone via e-mail is that it's so (comparatively) easy. The Internet divorces us from the human reality of our interlocutors — we are names typing at names. As such, it's easy to respond to the smallest slight with a burst of vitriol, and to care more about how many followers we have than about whether we've hurt someone's feelings. So has the Internet simply freed us up to express our true enmity for one another? Or have email and blogs and message boards and Twitter actually created a new hatred, a hatred for what other people become when they're no longer forced to deal with us physically, but also for what we've become, and for the medium that has transformed all of us? Is what we have with the Internet a love affair or a hatefuck? Again, maybe a little bit of both.

Love, Virtually [New York Times]

Earlier: Has Online Dating Really Lost Its Stigma?

Fonda's blog has an important thing going for it: as opposed to a Gwyneth-like exposition on her life or a Sean Penn-esque philosophical dissertation, this blog has a purpose. It's Fonda's chronicle of the lead-up to her new Broadway play, 33 Variations. Fonda takes us through the rehearsal process and the anxieties of returning to the stage after a long absence and, in short, gives us access to a world we wouldn't otherwise see and a subject that's of real interest to people.

As to the writing itself, it's quite engaging. Yes, it can veer into self-seriousness and empowerment-speak (no shocker to anyone who, um, read her recent memoir My Life So Far) but overall, Fonda comes across as appealingly open without veering into the brand of late-night overshare that's another celeb favorite. And she drops just enough names to keep us comfortably star-struck!

Made a positive discovery during the dinner break. I was able to fall asleep with Tulea on the couch in my little antechamber. I wasn't sure I'd be able to cause its real tiny, but when the lights were all off and my ear plugs were in—swish. I was out. It's a kind of Pavlovian thing that started in 1989 when I did the film "Stanley and Iris" with Robert DeNiro. I was fifty or so back then and finding that I needed a nap during the lunch break. I had never been a napper but I found that ear plugs made all the difference—signals to tune out. Even if I was only really asleep for 10 minutes, it made a real difference. My napping skills got honed during the decade with Ted who is a daily napper, then I got out of the habit because if your life isn't arranged so that regular napping is possible, you find you get wiped around nap time but have to push through. Now, with this play, I can tell that napping will be de rigueur again...I'm thinking all this isn't very interesting so I will stop for today. Tripping out about naps must be a sign.

See? Kind of endearing! There's an inherent arrogance, perhaps, to keeping such a journal and presuming anyone's interested, and it's certainly true that none of her stage nerves or anxiety's going to inspire much sympathy from anyone who's really hurting in the current economic climate. But overall? I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not saying the Jane Fonda going on the daily blogroll any time soon, but I should think it's a boon for real theatre-lovers. And it's actually a good idea: while I'm guessing not many films would stand for it, how fun would it be to be able to follow the production of more movies or shows? Anyway, Jane, welcome to the Blogosphere. And if you want to know what to avoid, may we draw your attention to a little newsletter called Goop?

My Blog [Jane Fonda]
Type On, Golden Blogger: Reading Jane Fonda's Web Journal [New York Times]

Readers have emailed us and told us that Jezebel is blocked by the US Army, MBTA, Bonhams Auction House, the Embassy Suites in Bentonville "Home of Wal-Mart" Arkansas, a Chicago Hilton and the Curtis Hotel in Denver — usually by automated web filters that block sites according to meta tags or words that appear on the page (like "sex" or "dick" or "pot").

Sure, we may discuss sex every now and then and we are sometimes known to use potty-mouth language when the mood strikes us, but are we ban-worthy? According to What's My Blog Rated, Jezebel is PG-13 because the word "sex" appears four times on our page and the word "shoot" (?) appears once. Our site probably would not appeal to someone under the age of 13 but that isn't because our content is inappropriate... it just isn't directed towards tweens.

Websites May Be Given X-Rating [Times UK]
Jezebel Blog Rating [What's My Blog Rated?]

Scarlett Lion links to the above photo and a fellow blogger's skepticism about the headline. Ladybrille writes "what counts is you GET OUT AND VOTE! Speak your mind by letting your vote count. DON'T YOU DARE stay indoors on this historical day!" She also interviews Derrick Ashong (aka musician/activist DNA), who says,

Obama represents opportunity in itself because this is a guy that has built an effective ground organization. When he says we are going to make a difference, for the first time in American political history, he has actually got foot soldiers nationwide that can be a part of making that change on a grassroots level, not on an ideological basis. That is a tip of the iceberg of what is possible.

However, he cautions that, "We as Africans gotta do the job for Africans to take care of our own; and no one should be under any illusion that we can relinquish that responsibility or shrug it off to Obama. We can say, 'When Obama gets elected we go chop [eat] more.' NO!"

Over at Black Looks, Ekine takes a harsher view:

Obama talks about bringing 'fundamental change' but the only fundamental change is his colour and when one looks more closely even his colour is not that fundamental afterall. Obama is intrinsically tied to the mainstream, pro-Zionist war mongering American superstructure. Though disappointing it is not so surprising that so many millions all over the world have been drawn in by Obama who panders to black and white notions of a “post racial” America and world. An imaginary world of convenience particularly for the millions of white people who will vote him into the White House.

But it's worth noting (if obvious) that African bloggers have a lot to think about besides our election. Ory Okolloh at Kenyan Pundit recently criticized an official report on Kenya's post-election violence, writing, "Not even a mention of the people who lost their lives! Especially the young people who truly believed they are protesting for a good cause and who were responding to 'mass action.'" Let's hope for a safe and fair election here in the US, and a new administration that remembers we're part of a larger world.

Top 45 Female African Bloggers [Afrigator]

The most painful thing about Blah Girls is how boring the Web series is. It's like the writers took all the jokes and memes from last year and rolled them into a Hills-like setting (complete with Hills-like pointlessness). Ashton may not realize that on the Internet, jokes have to be super current. Quips about Naomi Campbell throwing cell phones at people? So five minutes ago.

Aside from the moldy topics (including the fresh-from-2002-joke about Gwen Stefani not having pink hair anymore and living in London), the jokes are pretty flat. An example from the "Ex-patriots" episode:

Blah Girl: British guys are so hot! Prince William, Orlando Bloom, Harry Potter...
(A thought-bubble of Harry Potter holding a broom stick pops up)
Harry Potter (In an Elvis voice?): Rub my broomstick, baby.

Hilarious, right?

Another bizarre thing about the website is the racial stereotyping of the black Blah Girl, Tiffany:

Tiffany's bio reveals that her "current location" is "[her] hood" (that's how black people talk!), her biggest weaknesses are "limited edition sneakers" (another thing black people like, right?), and her biggest fear is "getting caught in crossfire." Wait, what?

The Blah Girls also include a token twee gay blogger named Stewart whose pink fauxhawk might lead one to believe that he's a biting satirical representation of Perez Hilton. But that would be expecting too much from this blog. Instead, Stewart is just a stereotypical flamboyant gay who is totes obsessed with clothes and his weight (his bio says that when he grows up he wants to "always be able to fit into skinny jeans") and he supplies the Blah Girls with their celebrity news (or something).

The site also has a heavy product placement deal with Vitamin Water. In the "Adoption" episode, Tiffany says that she wants to drink "Vitamin Water Formula 50" to be "cool like 50."

Hm, I wonder who the site's sponsors are?

Ah, that explains it.

There are some funny things on the site: One Blah Girls' dog is named "Botox." One Blah Girl complains that her step-mother burned down the family summer house after too many "Lexipro and Limoncello cocktails." A caption on a Michael Phelps photo in which he hugs a girl in a bikini reads, "Feel that? That's my ninth medal."

We'd like to think that the site could get funnier. But, since this concerns the doomed post-Punk'd combination of Ashton Kutcher and celebrities (remember Pop Fiction?), we'll pronounce Blah Girls dead on arrival.

Blah Girls
Dude, Is That Your Gossip Site? [Portfolio]