Lend Me Your Ears

Black sweater: Laundry room freebie! * Skirt: vintage, thrifted * Tights; Target * Boots: Ciao Bella, remixed * Earrings: courtesy of Maurices * Ring: heirloom, remixed

Can I please just say how awesome I felt in this outfit! I feel like this had a totally retro, Mad-Men-inspired feel to it. I found this skirt over the weekend when my friend and I went thrift-shopping, along with a couple of other finds that I'll debut soon. This particular thrift store doesn't have dressing rooms, so I basically just eye-balled the fit of the pieces I found. I fell in love with this skirt the second I saw it, but I was a little afraid it wouldn't fit properly. Below-the-knee skirts can be really difficult to pull off, especially for people of short stature (me alert!), so I was half expecting to have to hem this one, but I actually really like where it ended up falling. Just long enough to feel retro, but not so long that I felt squat.

I've been thinking a lot about the blogging community lately. There have been some great posts lately, most notably by Already Pretty, The Coveted, Style Symmetry, and Oranges and Apples, which have gone over some of the finer points of what exactly it means to be a fashion blogger, in one capacity or another. I mentioned this in my comment to Eyeliah's post, but what I really think it all boils down to is community. These big issues, these controversies, peoples' blood boiling (okay, maybe I'm over-dramatizing here)...I think it's just each person's own interpretation of what it means to be a part of this internet-based, fashion-centric, blogging community. Each of you that I've interacted with on a more personal level have expressed your connection with the community. Community is why we blog. It is why we continue to post every day (or close to it, at least). It is the community that keeps us coming back, day after day, week after week, to post pictures of ourselves and read posts by other bloggers. But what is that community? How do we define it? Does the "fashion blogging community" mean different things to different people? I feel like many of the more incendiary posts, comments, and controversies in the fashion blogging world can really be tracked back to a basic disagreement about what it means to be a part of the blogging community. To me, blogging means posting, relatively regularly, but commenting, too. The commenting part is actually just as, if not more, important as the posting part, in my opinion. I'm not going to get too into the whole comments "thing", because I honestly just don't have the energy for it, and I think the commenters over at Already Pretty have really done a beautiful job at hashing out the intricacies of the issue, but I am definitely a firm believer that my commenters make my blog. Between Laundry Days would just be some weird daily journal if it weren't for all of you. And I feel that I've formed real relationships with many of you, relationships that have formed over the months as we've participated in this so-called community.

I think that one of the things that gets lost in the shuffle is the aspect of real, personal, humanity. The internet, by definition, is a pretty impersonal thing. We post, and comment, and check emails, and upload photos to Facebook and Flickr, and post our innermost thoughts on Twitter and Tumblr, but we do so from the privacy of our living room, in our pajamas, without anyone around. That allows us to make the whole experience as impersonal as we want. So I think that sometimes people forget that there are real people on the other ends of these websites. Jessica, of What I Wore, is a real woman, whose real feelings can really get hurt. But, then again, so are her readers, and insinuating that they are all jealous of her can be pretty tactless as well (okay, so I guess I am going to get into the commenting thing...). In any case, I think that many of us tend to forget that there are whole people, with whole lives, that read our blogs, and make their own blogs, and are reaching out to this community of women for friendship, and support, and creativity. There are dozens of blogs that I read every day written by women that I would love to meet in real life. Because these blogs have connected with mine, and together we form a community of beautiful, funny, supportive women who, I think, genuinely care about each other. To me, that is what the fashion blogging community is. When I read my comments at the end of each day, I know who each of you are and what your lives are like, to some extent. I feel connected to you all, in some small way, and I hope you feel connected to me. But let me put it to you: what is the "blogging community" to you? Why do you stick with this crazy project? Who keeps your creative wheels turning?

Title song: Joe Cocker, "With a Little Help from My Friends"