I had the pleasure of being a panelist at the Boston BlogHer ReachOut Tour. The women in our session were amazing, and asked equally amazing questions. Since our focus was helping people feel comfortable with hacking, coding, or just plain starting a blog, I came up with an analogy to help the women in my group feel more comfortable with the basic terminology. It went over like gangbusters. 

"..from an anthropologic standpoint, it fascinates me that the blogging world has become something of a microcosm of society, complete with the "popular" kids, the sycophants, the not-so-populars and so on." When I read this blog comment, it was so powerful, so truthful, that I stopped writing for two months. I needed to reevaluate the space in my heart, the space in my head, and my space online. I've found that the internet is not a friendly place to live. Much like a high school cafeteria, bloggers have unconciously segregated themselves into cliques.

About two weeks ago, I shit a solid gold brick. It fell out of my body, rolled across the floor, and smashed into my television, where an advertisement for the FX show Black.White. was showing.

She looked at me with big, brown eyes and a lopsided ponytail, eyes squinting with curiousity. "Why do you put your hair in knots? They look bad. They feel bad." She was approximately six years old - and my niece - so it wouldn't be socially acceptable to dropkick her. As young women, most of us learn that the great unifier, the ultimate divider, and the ever-changing esteem booster is HAIR. Nowhere is this more prevelant than in black culture. As women, we teach young girls by example, however inadvertantly. So what would my lesson be today?

I'm feeling seriously inadequate about being a contributing editor for BlogHer. When I signed up for the position, I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to find and expose bloggers of color, knowing full well that my blogroll consisted of the whitest mothers around - literally.