By Chelsea Durgin
Lauren Conrad’s website is not a feminist of color space due to the lack of feminist and diverse talk within the site. I doubt that these ideas and discussions would be shunned but they are irrelevant or what would be considered “trolling” and the responses would be little to none. Lauren Conrad’s website is a female friendly or female dominant site which does allow for safe and open discussions. However, political movements or large and heavy topics are not in the norm within the style and beauty discussions of Lauren Conrad’s forum.
After listening to my classmate’s presentations, I wish overall that my site was more responsive, even to the point of receiving obscene responses like Emily Ann‘s and Daniela’s … well maybe not Daniela’s. I would compare my site to Hyemin‘s site because we are both in a female space but not a feminist space. Both our site’s are highly
about the female body and fashion culture, however, it is not from the view of feminist empowerment.
What I am going to try to apply to Lauren Conrad’s website, that I have not yet, is to use Lauren Conrad’s fashion and beauty culture as a feminist empowerment space. In other words, I want to use the material that Lauren’s forum has given the users of the website and change the way people view that material to a more feminist and
racial view of the material. Less of the “How to’s” of makeup, hair, style etc. but the “Why’s”. Before I was trying to immerse myself into the Lauren Conrad’s fan culture and then add some (somewhat weak) feminist and post-racial material; However I was not celebrating it.
In my next stage of the study I will not ask questions and force hard discussion about feminism and race within the beauty and fashion culture, but I will celebrate feminism and race within beauty and fashion culture. By celebrating these concepts while using material that still interest the fans of Lauren Conrad, I hope to introducing feminist and racial context into the website and make it a feminist space, not only a female friendly space. Hopefully, I can reach someone to look at fashion and beauty in a broader view and not within self evaluation. I can also help myself answer questions about the relationship between the beauty/ fashion world and feminism/race ideas.
