I ignored the brouhaha the year the women at BlogHer argued over being “just” a Mommy blogger. I am a Mommy and I blog. I have been doing this for a decade now. I’m not embarrassed. I shrugged about the arguments over PR blackouts. If you’re tired of doing product reviews, don’t do them. We need all kinds of blogs and review blogs are just one of them. If you are paid to write posts, it’s an advertisement. Write what you want. Read what you want. It’s all good.

I thought the Motrin ads were funny. I wasn’t offended, but I watched the Twitter mob gathering torches and pitchforks. Entertaining? Maybe in a train wreck sort of way. It should have been educational for anyone who doesn’t think their brand needs to be interacting with consumers. I like to think that kind of energy can be channeled to do good. I know that social media has helped me.

It looks like this year’s topics of introspection are cocktail parties and swag. The posts coming out of BlogHer so far include:
Not all bloggers are like that
In Which I Pi** Off Lots of People and Do Not Care

The swag behavior is childish and may or may not have been exaggerated by the enormous crowd of people that attend BlogHer. From the descriptions I’m hearing, it sounds like the day after Thanksgiving sales. Event sponsors brought swag that was far better than the pencils I get excited about at Knoxville’s First Day Festival. I drooled at the pictures of what women were getting in their goody bags. I could have filled the children’s stockings with all those trinkets. Everyone just got caught up in all the excitement of BlogHer. Maybe crowd control will reduce some of the problem. Maybe lobby tickets were a mistake. Most likely, women will have higher expectations for themselves and others in the future. I believe in women enough to know it will not be a problem next year.

Then, there is the desire to band together and protect any fellow blogger who has been wronged. This is one of the good things about who we are. Please don’t make it into an us vs them. Don’t get mad at Nikon. We should all be lucky enough to have one of their cameras. Don’t get mad at babies. Tiny babies are completely portable and when they are with their personal feeding/soothing device, there is no wailing or destruction. It’s only when they get mobile that they damage property. We can support each other without having to make someone a bad guy.

I don’t want to call myself some politically correct thing like “woman who blogs” or “online diarist” or whatever name people are going to create out of this. I am a Mom. I blog. If someone asks me to review a product that fits in my life, I will do so if there are no strings attached. I would rather write about my life, my family and whatever interests me. I will not do paid posts, but I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to see behind the scenes of where my food comes from or have a conversation with elected officials. I write about focused topics on other sites. I’m not paid for what I write over there either. I write e-mails to politicians. That doesn’t make me a lobbyist. It all falls under the giant umbrella of being a mom who has ideas, opinions and a life that she likes to write about. There are lots of Mommy bloggers who are not like that. There are lots of us who haven’t stopped telling our stories. We don’t need a new label. We just need to remember who we really are.