Heather Armstrong gave a really thoughtful and classically unsettling talk at this year's XOXO Festival in Portland where she explained her experience stepping away from pro mommyblogging at Dooce.
You should really watch it or, if you're in a setting where the phrase HAIRY VAGINAS doesn't go over so well, then maybe just listen to it. With some headphones. Because that's her first slide, and the center of her talk.
I have to say, as different as our styles, Heather continues to command my respect for her achievements and her openness. Her baby daddy and then-husband John Armstrong and I were in what I think is the first newspaper article about dadblogging, back in early 2004.
Which was awesome, except that the article had a picture of me holding the 6-week-old kid, and her name was in the caption. And I had just decided that I was not going to use her picture or name on my dadblog. This was so long ago we called it, "Staying out of her future Google results." It was a position that got tested when TV people wanted to talk dadstuff-but only if the kid came along as a prop. So I was not on the Today show.
It was pretty well established, though, when advertisers and agencies and publicists wanted to buy "sponsored content" on Daddy Types, something that we declined to do over and over again. And ultimately, I'm glad for it. Especially after Heather's horrible-sounding experience making sponsored posts for Banana Republic.
