in case anyone is wondering, no one is paying me to write this

There has been a lot of interesting dialogue online ever since Nielsen made this crazy list of "Power Moms" in the blogosphere. This was intended to be used as some sort of powerpoint presentation to convince advertisers that momblogs are the hot place to spend their dollars by throwing products at us and having us review them. Because, you know, you are all hanging on my every word in such a way that you REALLY want to know what cleaning products Wes and I use (hint: sometimes Method but usually baking soda and vinegar) and which brand of toilet paper gets the bri seal of approval (hint: nothing with one ply).

I will just let you know right here that I have never received any offers to review anything. I am not such hot shit as all that. And at first I felt left out when people started blogging about trips and companies sponsoring them and all that. But I think I am over it. I think that this round of interesting posts by some of the Power Moms (and some who SHOULD be counted as Power Moms) has made me not so concerned with all that.

The bottom line is that I don't really want to be a famous mommyblogger. I want to be a famous writer. If writing a really good mommyblog makes me famous, awesome. If not, I will go at it the more conventional way.

I mention this because I am sad that this is the way things are heading. I am sad that marketing is such a big word in this realm even while I understand its allure and necessity. I wish we could all just write really, really well.

My Google Reader is now holding more than 750 unread blog posts because I have new categories for BlogHer moms and dads and this whole new "Power Mom" group. I put them in their own folder with my own tongue in my own cheek, because it is a silly name. I have read some of them for years, like dooce. Some I have read since last year's BlogHer when I followed all the posts about the conference and discovered some amazing writers like Alice Bradley of FinSlippy and Eden Kennedy of Fussy.org and Polly of LesbianDad. Lately, I find that I always click Sweetney and Surrender, Dorothy and Sweet/Salty and my co-panelist Velveteen Mind any time I see that there is a new post. Mom-101 is the author of a few of these posts about marketing issues and will be hosting a panel on that – I enjoy her a lot. My recent favorite is The Bloggess, a fabulously over-the top blogger who CRACKS MY SHIT UP EVERY TIME but I think everyone else has known about her forever and I am just coming late to the party.

I have been dutifully adding blogs to my reader for the past year, and at a far more accelerated pace since I decided to attend, and was then asked to speak at, BlogHer. I mention those folks above because those are the blogs where it feels good and old time bloggy – I am reading because their stories are captivating and because the writing is excellent. Some of the others on the list are, honestly, just homework. I am reading them to try to be an educated BlogHer attendee and speaker. But the writing is just not as fabulous and the stories are less compelling. And people who write a lot of reviews get kind of boring. And blogs where every other post is like, "So this company sent me off to this fabulous vacation and while I was there I saw this fabulous person, blah blah blah…" are just not my cup of tea.

All this to say that if I ever rave about something, you can trust that it's my very own rave. No one spotted us our overnight at Sesame Place and I don't get a free Elmo doll out of the deal. And I won't be holding a giveaway to give you YOUR free Elmo doll, either.

I don't mean to say that I would turn down offers that were really perfectly suited to my blog. I don't think reviews or sponsorships or any of that are automatically bad. I have ads that just barely pay for my typepad account and it would be cool if they made more money – I certainly wouldn't turn it down. If Disney appeared in my inbox and wanted to fly me down to review some new ride, I wouldn't say no because do you KNOW how much time I have spent studying the rides of Disney in an effort to truly understand their mechanisms and line patterns and loading speeds as part of my neverending quest to avoid all lines longer than 20 minutes? Um. Well, a lot.

I don't think this is all necessarily a bad thing, marketing and the like. I just hope that people who take those things on continue to mostly blog important, heartfelt, meaningful stories about their lives. That's all.

Oh, but just one more thing about the Power Moms and product reviews. Am I the only one who is TERRIBLY offended by the continuing assumptions that MOMS are the ones concerned with baby and cleaning products? Fuck that very much. What the hell decade is this, anyway? Let's shake that whole woman/baby/housework thing already, shall we? Maybe Product Reviewing Mommybloggers could start some sort of cleaning product boycott and shake things up.

Not that I have read any Mommyblogging Cleaning Product Reviews. I am just talking out of my ass here.

I hope it goes without saying that all of you whom I have read forever are in your own even more regularly read folder on my Reader. That's the special folder reserved for people whose stories I know by heart. You know who you are.