The Bloggers Blog Awards (& a Word on Diversity)

Guys, GUYS I’M UP FOR BEST BEAUTY BLOGGER AWARDS AT THE BLOGGERS BLOG AWARDS. I was trying to keep my cool about this but I’m not going to lie I’m absolutely over the moon. I didn’t make the short list last year for my photography but it was still amazing to think at least one person (that isn’t my mum) voted for me (although if it was you mum, thanks!). I’m hugely honoured to be on the list with the other bloggers, every one of them deserve to win too; do have a look at their blogs because they are AMAZING (you can look here). I’ll be honest I don’t think I have a hope in hell but a girl’s got to try right?

There was also some controversy around the award (and awards more generally) that Grace Victory addressed here I really recommend giving it a read if you care about diversity, especially the issue of race. The other issue raised was that disabled and mental health bloggers weren’t acknowledged. Now this is an issue that’s very personal to me. I’m disabled and have depression and anxiety, and previously had severe agoraphobia and panic disorder. I talk about these things throughout my blog, this is my current pinned tweet. I also know that several other bloggers who are up for the awards suffer from mental health problems and chronic health problems. This hugely upset me and I reached out to the person twice and was ignored so make of that what you will. There’s also talk of a separate blog awards for LGBT+, mental health, PoC, disabled and more. There are several problems with this but I’ll mention a couple of the most troubling. Firstly, not all disabilities are visible. I think you’d be hard pressed to see my disability, you may see me limping occasionally or struggling to walk but the first thought would probably be that I’d strained my ankle or something similar. The first thought wouldn’t be ‘oh I bet she was in a serious car crash when she was younger, was almost paralysed and had to get several major spinal fusion surgeries of which has seriously impacted her mobility and long-term health’.

I understand that for visual campaigns having someone who is visibly disabled has more impact than someone who is not, but this is a dangerous road to go down. This is the kind of thing that runs parallel with invisibly disabled people getting harassed in car parks for using a blue badge. Representation is important, but we must be careful not give any kind of support to out of date ideas of disability. Disability is hard enough to deal with without society deciding that you’re not actually disabled (when you very much are).

Another problem I have with this is segregation. A separate bloggers awards is not something I am personally comfortable with (but each to their own). I think it only serves to differentiate and can cause further exclusion from mainstream awards. Instead, we as blog readers need to look out of our echo chamber (if we don’t already) and look for blogs that have something important to say and that are perhaps excluded from the upper echelons of blogging. You only have to look at who the big bloggers are to see that there is a problem with diversity in blogging (perhaps I should say in Fashion and Beauty blogging). But please remember that brands or magazines do not run The Bloggers Blog Awards, rather it’s all down to Hayley from Tea Party Beauty. It’s an award by bloggers for bloggers. I personally think there’s a good selection on there (maybe more PoC would be good), there’s bigger bloggers and smaller bloggers (hi), there’s a range of people with different sexualities (and personally I don’t think they need to ‘out’ themselves just to prove a point), there’s people living with mental health problems, and there’s chronically ill and disabled bloggers on there. The internet is often a place people come to to escape their IRL problems so not everyone wants to disclose every single issue that affects them. That should be respected.

Anyway, I’m going to rant on too much but please if you like my blog I’d love a vote but I do recommend having a look at the other wonderful bloggers up for the awards too. You can cast your vote HERE <3