‘The Best Way I Knew – Through Fashion’: On Personal Style Bloggers and Self-Expression

Abstract

The connection between personal style and self-expression has emerged as a foundational concept in early studies of personal style blogging, as consistent with the field of fashion theory in general. Yet the kinds of expression facilitated by blogs and the implications of this for style bloggers themselves has yet to be examined. The selves performed on the spaces of blogs are not only articulated through dress, but also through its documentation; selves that flow outwards in an ongoing narrative towards a readership as well as inwards as bloggers creatively think through who they feel themselves to be and how they wish to be seen. The dressed and blogged self, then, becomes a self in dialogue, a self taking shape through performance on the exploratory space of a personal style blog. Starting from a Butlerian conception of performativity, this discussion will explore the possibilities of self-expression on style blogs, focusing in particular on the complex relationship between style bloggers, their blogged selves (or ‘blogging personae’) and their readers. The online performance of selfhood of British blogger Rosalind Jana will be constitute the central case study, demonstrating as it does the creative, intimate and alternative performances of self made possible by blogging. Jana is a blogger who employed styling and photographic angles to conceal and then reveal her severe scoliosis to her readers, later writing in a reflective blogpost that she revealed her condition in ‘the best way I knew– through fashion.’ The role that clothing played as a means through which Jana could both share her scoliosis and ensuing emergency surgery– and engage with it herself– and the response that this blogged revelation evoked from her readers demonstrates the possibilities of style blogging to represent and explore selfhood in ways precluded by offline life.