5.2 Girl With A One Track Mind

5.2 Do some online research into blogs as a new media genre: their origins, development etc. and share your findings in your entries. What forms of expression are they really good for?

A quick google of popular blogs quickly led me to the “Bloggies”, annual awards given out to popular blogs. From here one blog which particularly grabbed my attention was “Girl With a One Track Mind” , which won the award of Best British or Irish Web Blog in 2006 and 2007.

This blog originally was used by author Zie Margolis to discuss the ins and outs of her sex life, often in graphic detail. In her biography she says she wrote the blog because “A sexist double-standard about male vs. female sexuality still exists, and which chastises women if they express sexual wants and needs; I hoped my blog would provide a counter-balance to this old-fashioned attitude.” The blog was intensely popular, with 6 million visitors over the last four and a half years and averaging 150,000 a month.

I would argue that using a blog in order to update this old-fashioned view was incredibly effective, in that the sheer volume of views she had led people to see that female attitudes towards sex were vastly different to how everyone had assumed they were. And Zoe’s blog provided an outlet for this new more empowered attitude to become more mainstream, and for other women to not feel like they should be ashamed for sharing attitudes which would usually be considered to be more masculine with men when it comes to sex.

Other mediums would be extremely difficult to put this view across, as the anonymity of the Internet is what made Zoe feel like she were able to share these feelings online, and the anonymity meant that people were less afraid to admit they agreed with her. Zoe went to great lengths to ensure that no one would find out her identity, and although in the end she was “outed”, I cannot think of other mediums which would have allowed her to continue to share these stories for so long and in such an honest and open manner.