On the fourth weekend of this month hundreds of women will descend upon the Sheraton in Chicago for a weekend of debauchery and mayhem. Either that, or it’s a blogger convention, I forget which.
It’s called BlogHer09 and I’ve heard many things about it, mostly based on the anticipation of other women who have never attended. According to these fear-mongerers, it will be incredibly intimidating and fetal position-inducing. Everyone will be prettier than me, skinnier than me, and better than me.
I will walk into a huge room with women chattering away and not know anyone. I will steel myself, fix a forced smile and walk up to a couple of them and introduce myself and it will go something like this:
Me: Hi, I’m Margaret.
Skinny Blogger #1: Oh, hello. Which blog are you?
Me (smiling and thrilled that they are interested): Nanny Goats in Panties?
[crickets and blank looks]
Me: It’s a humor blog?
Skinny Blogger #1: Okay, but what is your niche?
[mind you, while this conversation is going on, they are simultaneously Twittering everybody else in the room from their mobile application devices.]
Me: Neesh? Uhhh, what’s yours?
Skinny Blogger #1: I have a very important political blog that speaks to the oppression of women.
Skinny Blogger #2: I have a very popular social networking forum for parents and education.
Me: I have pictures of goats.
The Twittering ceases as they look up from their phones at me. Then at my horribly unfashionable and ill-fitting clothes. Up and down. Up and down, they will look.
Their painfully manicured nails and large diamond rings will clink against their champagne glasses as they press down the clutch and downshift in order to leave me in the dust. They’ll ask me about my monetizing strategies and RSS feeds and analytics and who my sponsors are and which platform I’m using. Platform! I know what that is! I’ll manage to sputter that I use Blogger.
Skinny Blogger #1: Oh, Honey, you have to at least be using WordPress.
Skinny Blogger #2: I hire mine out.
Skinny Blogger #1: NOBODY uses Blogger anymore.
They tell me that I have to be using a real platform because of all the plug-ins (whatever THAT means).
And that will be it. They will have sized me up as an amateur and I will have pizzza sauce on my horribly unfashionable shirt and they will talk about what the famous bloggers at the conference are doing and what parties they are going to.
I will be the commoner at the Hamptons, the lame friend who another blogger HAD to bring to the party because our parents know each other. You know, my Dad is their butler or something.
Skinny Blogger #1: What are those, Candies? Aren’t they like, from the 80′s?
Then they will laugh uproariously at me. Their two heads will kaleidascope around like a surreal laughing nightmare scene from a Fellini film. They will toss their heads back with their perfectly coiffed hair swaying behind them, and then turn to look at me, their perfectly made-up eyes piercing my soul.
In a last spastic effort at professionalism, I will hand them each my card at which they will glance and dangle from their fingers as if it’s been smeared with fried chicken grease. Which it probably will have.
They will reluctantly hand me their blog swag, one of which will be a Coach Bag festooned with her logo, the other will be her best-selling novel attached to a Mink Coat, the lining emblazoned with her very important blog banner.
[Don't ask me how they Twiiter on their phones and hold their champagne glasses and all their swag. It is probably because they are fabulous and they can do everything.]
And then I will walk, not run, over to the refreshments table and shove all the macaroons down my gullet, after which I will run into the bathroom and cry myself to sleep in one of the stalls. I will wake up around 3am alone on the cold tile floor and stumble out to the conference ballroom, completely dark save for a triangle of light shining from an open door. As I walk toward the light, I will catch a glimpse of something on the floor:
So, if you are attending BlogHer09, let me know, so I can hunt you down and pretend to know you and cling to you all weekend and suck the ever-living life out of you.
I am Insecurity. Hear me squeak.
Occasionally I will be at the macaroon table. But I will have cards.
Did you hear about the Sudanese man who was ordered by the court to marry a goat? Something about making an honest girl out of her.
