Sheila Fashions

Dear “Sheila Fashions” (I hope you don’t mind if I call you that?):

Almost every day, you search for “sheila fashions” on my blog multiple times. This has been going on for months. Sometimes you put “sheila fashions” into the Search box 10 times in one day! I am curious: what on earth are you looking for? Don’t you realize after the first day of searching, that I do not write about fashion? I do not write about other people’s fashion, and I also do not write about my own. Out of curiosity, I did a search for “sheila fashions” – just to see what comes up – and there’s nothing there. Nothing that I think you want, I mean.

When I open up my “search terms log” and see you clogging up the waterways, it makes me think: Okay, so every day I post. (When I’m not traveling to Taos New Mexico to meet Dean Stockwell, that is.) I post on a variety of things. Movies. My family. Books. I link to sites I find interesting. I write about men I loved. It’s kind of a vibrant site, dear Sheila Fashions. It has a lot going for it, and a lot of people seem to enjoy checking in with me every day – to see whatever it is I am writing about on that particular day. But you, with your increasingly anxious one-note-johnny search-term mania, seem unsatisfied. Nervous, even. Like you’re writing a term paper on “Sheila Fashions” and you just keep hoping, against hope, that you will come to my site – and find a huge essay I have written on my “fashions” (hitherto un-noticed by you when you did a search only the day before) … and then you will rest in peace. But if you do that search on a Monday, and then you do that same search the next day … I begin to wonder: what the heck is going on?. If “sheila fashions” didn’t yield up a wealth of posts on Monday, then it stands to reason that nothing will have changed by Tuesday.

I am more amused by your incessant “sheila fashioning” than anything. But in general, I’m irritated by those who read me every day and who seem vaguely dissatisfied with how I write, what I write about, and what my focus is. It’s a strange phenomenon – and I’ve thought a lot about it. I read a lot of personal-diary type blogs – and for the most part, the audiences there are in total sync with the blogger. Like attracts like. But since I did my seismic shift on Ye Olde Blogge a couple years ago – I’ve had some hostile holdouts. Not really “personal trolls” – but people whose comments definitely are out of sync with the tone here, and what I’m trying to do. Many of the hostile ones drifted away when they realized I would not be dominated or bullied. But: I have no big mission here. I am not a “citizen journalist” (thank God for that), I don’t think of myself as challenging the “MSM” (yawn) … I’m not topical. This is nothing but a personal weblog. It’s not meant to be “inclusive”. It really isn’t. It’s not meant to be “exclusive” either … but it’s certainly not meant to be for “everyone”. If you like me, then you show up. There’s no reason otherwise to be here. I’m not inflammatory, I don’t push the envelope, I don’t read the New York Times and link to an article and make an outraged comment and then ask: “What do you all think?” (Nothing against people who like to blog like that. Seriously, to each his/her own. It’s just not my thing – I don’t read sites like that, and my site is not like that. It is a great mistake to persistently be confused about where you are. If you frequent Little Green Footballs and then come here and try to behave that way on my site – I will ban you. I have a one-strike-you’re out policy with certain types of comments. But you’d have to be a moron to not realize that the environment here is different than the environment there. So adjust!) I sit here and write about my curtains, my iPod, and some dude I kissed in 1987. That’s what’s going on here – nothing more … but some people can’t seem to deal with that. It makes them feel too passive, I imagine. You know, they get to be big tough guys on other blogs, pontificating on politics and their opinions, and they don’t get to do that here. Let’s not even get started on the email exchange I had with the guy who could not believe that a woman – A WOMAN – would write so interestingly!! A WOMAN wrote posts like this – that made him think! He was amazed. A woman made him think??? WHAT WILL THE CRAZIES COME UP WITH NEXT???? He could not get over it. Every other sentence referenced my gender. I almost felt sorry for him because he had no idea what he was getting himself into when he wrote to me so openly about his amazement at a WOMAN writing something that gripped him. He seemed to think that the only book ever written by a woman was Fried Green Tomatoes and he judged all women writers by his blunted ignorant criteria. As far as this douchebag was concerned, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, O Pioneers, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Wise Blood, Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, The Shipping News, Pride and Prejudice, Cat’s Eye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Wrinkle in Time, (shall I go on?) were all anomalies. All women writers should be judged from Fried Green Tomatoes. I should have posted that entire email exchange. It was hilarious. I gave him a reading list, like the one above. And I finished him off very quickly, as you can imagine (he said: “I imagine you think I’m a neanderthal” and I said, “Nope. Just a bigot.”) – and, what a shock, never heard from him again. But you know, I get bozos like that on occasion. Now, let’s be fair: MOST people are awesome here. I’ve got a great group who show up every day. But there are a few holdouts … people who started reading me when I was in a perpetual stage of outrage in 2002 and 2003 … and they can’t adjust. It took me a while to realize that that is their issue, and I handle it on a case by case basis. Much easier than adjusting how I write for those holdouts, who don’t seem to ‘get it’.

It’s funny – Emily emailed me recently about the Quantum Leap posts and said, “So have you gotten any complaints? You know … that you’re shallow AND elitist?” We laugh about this. One person bitches I’m shallow. Another bitches I’m elitist. It’s funny that those two seemingly contradictory things are the complaints I get (not so much anymore, though.) Those who bitch to me about being elitist (a boo hoo when you write about James Joyce, I feel left out!) conviently forget that I adore Bring It On and saw Blue Crush 3 times in the movie theatre. I also love Loverboy and am addicted to Rock of Love on Vh1. Those who tut-tut at my shallow-ness forget my long essays about my life, my experiences, my thought processes, my grappling with issues, etc. I have come to realize, over my years of blogging, that you cannot please everybody. I would be blogging if nobody read me. Once I figured that out, I started to just write to please myself. Interestingly enough, the volume of comments went down once I started doing that (I can almost date it specifically, with a specific post) … but my traffic itself went up. Veddy interesting.

All of this is just a tangent, dear “Sheila Fashions” person. Your search-term seems relatively benign. It’s not like the search terms I see on occasion where it is apparent that the reader wants to know my political views, or who I voted for, or my views on Iraq, or whether or not I am a Christian. You know, trying to narrow me down, or pin me down is more like it. “Sheila Fashions” isn’t THAT kind of search-term. For all I know, you may be a regular reader, and you may enjoy all of my output – the essays, the links, the book excerpts, the mee-mees … You may stop by here every day and go with my flow … because you like to. It’s just that you are haunted by the fact that I have never written about fashion … and you feel compelled to search for it every day. But it’s interesting: you’re not just searching for “fashion”. You are searching for “Sheila Fashions”. Which is SO interesting and bizarre to me – because that makes it seem like you are just dying to know – DYING – what I wear every day. What my philosophy of clothing design is. What bags I prefer, what shoes. I can only guess at your thought processes. Frankly, I question your mental clarity. If I go to a film site I love, and wonder if they have written about Hitchcock, and I put “Hitchcock” into the Search box on a Monday and nothing comes up … then you can bet I’m not going back on Tuesday – to see if they have written anything about Hitchcock in the last 24 hours. This is your behavior right now.

So I figured I’d just give you a post … entitled “Sheila Fashions” – which will come up next time you search (I imagine it’ll be at about 3 pm later today) … and you can know that I HEAR YOU. I hear your concern, I feel your worry, I know that you are looking for something that I am not giving – perpetually … and while I don’t plan on doing anything about it, I just needed to address it.

I will, however, throw you a bone, because there’s something in me that does admire your (albeit misguided) persistence:

Today I will be wearing a long black skirt, my black scoopy-necked top, and a jean jacket.

When I was at the reception in Taos, I wore the same black scoopy-necked tank top – a long tight black skirt – and a brown pin-striped blazer – not a long blazer, but a short fitted one. I looked fabulous.

Hope that helps.