Entertainment Value...In Mean Spritedness?!!

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"Such and such has such a big butt, she should really put down her paper cutter and rubons and take her truck butt to the gym a few days a week."

"So and so really shouldn't post close cropped pictures of herself until she gets a few laser hair removal treatments under her belt."

"I can't believe that whatsherface posted pictures of her and her fugly husband on the beach...you could almost see Green Peace in the background trying to get them to jump back in the water!"
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You would think that those comments came from a bunch of overly entitled high school girls or perhaps some Beverly Hills elitist right out of "Clueless" but they're not. Those types of comments are falling (left and right) out of the mouths of women who share my hobby of scrapbooking. They are often spewn for no other reason other than the fact that the "offending" party failed to come up with anything else to talk about.

What the heck has happened to this hobby?

I've read time and time again, the justifications that women who would say these types of things to and about people (most often not to their face, but almost certainly after every dose of Internet courage). The justifications are just about as ludicrous as the fact that a grown woman would allow such things to fall from her mouth without provocation.

It's all in the spirit of fun.
And somehow, that makes it alright to abandon some of the most basic of social norms; acceptance of differences between people? And that somehow makes it okay to hurt other people? I personally tack the fun label on activities that don't involve making someone feel
"less than" or determining whether others have a right to share this planet with me. It's not fun, it's malicious tomfoolery on the behalf of people with somewhat skewed moral compasses. You know, in the South, it used to be considered fun by the 'good old boys' to chase down blacks with their vehicles and string them up on trees. When the violence lost favor with the collective masses, it then became fun to call the darkies derogatory names for the sake of the good old chuckle. I don't think the "spirit of fun" is going to hold.

It's my opinion and I have a right to state it.
Hitler had an opinion too... I'm sure you've heard of it. I admit, sometimes some really crude things come to mind when I see something that I view to be offensive to me. Now, most of the time that revolves around 'deposits' left by animals or gratuitous displays on the television, but sometimes my offense does originate from someones personal appearance. Where the maturity comes in is when I decide (in an instant because somethings are ingrained) that I have no right to judge any person on this planet.
My granny used to tell me that "God don't make junk". I've tried to hold true to that as much as possible, though I have wavered under provocation. My point is this, yes, you have a right to voice your opinion, but you also have a responsibility for your voice and what results from the venom you spew. I think that this is where the anon blogs provide the courage in the form of lessened responsibility. It's so much easier to walk away from hateful, denigrating comments that you make when nobody knows who you are...I'll be there hasn't been much sleep loss (on the part of the offender) to date.

This isn't 2peas, this is the real scrapbooking world:
I don't know what a site has to do with a lackadaisical sense of social responsibility, but okay. I don't know what the 'real scrapbooking world' is either...someone break it down for me. I DO know that regardless of venue, civility should be the soup of the day. I don't see any breakdown in the industry that will result from a collective agreement to leave the superficial personal attacks out of the equation. I don't see any tangible benefit being derived from being socially irresponsible and oppressive.

If you put yourself out there, you should expect it:
Uh, no. If I put myself out there, I should expect to be subject to a degree of exposure. Once I left the juvenile school yard, I left the notions of juvenile behaviour behind. If I put myself out there, I will not expect my children, my family, my lifestyle or anything other than my craft to be subjected to criticism. Why? Because, frankly, nobody has a right to judge my worthiness as a human.
Sadly, it is the case that people in the public eye are subject to scrutiny, but it's a condition that we, as humans have created, nurtured, and allowed to destroy our world. It is your personal choice to do something that at least a small part of you must be telling you is wrong. I suppose for some, life would be grand if the world revolved around their Hitler-esc views of worthiness and entitlement, but I can assure you that for the majority, life is a lot better when we get along.

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The other side to this coin is the fact that while it's okay for someone to anonymously rip someone apart for failing to look a certain way or for having the audacity to possess physical 'flaws", it's never okay for that person to defend herself or her family. No... they are labeled as "pearl clutchers" and "hand slappers". Well, my granny would clutch her pearls whenever she saw someones child behave very badly, and my parents would slap my hands when ever I flipped out and lost control of common sense (i.e., painting with my mom's lipstick, and taking her wallet to school for show and tell). It's funny that those two terms are used on the anon blogs to refer to people who admonish the personal attacks that go on there. It's funny because those terms refer to actions which are often the consequential result of witnessed juvenile behavior. So the offenders know that they are behaving childishly and subconsciously call themselves on it.

What about the superficiality of it all? The focus on physical appearance...are people who say things like that in an attempt to spearhead a character assassination helping or hurting the struggle with personal image issues that our society is facing? I don't see how a person accepting themselves (even if it means not plucking that chin hair) is hurting anyone. Nor do I see why it is my right to judge them on the merits of how they look in a bathing suit or up close and personal. Let me state for the record, I'm no fashion-diva so I won't be dictating what anyone should wear.
What is all of this "fun" doing to the industry?

In my opinion, if you are going to rip someone apart for something as superficial as whether or not she tweezes her eyebrows in a way you like, or attack someone's children because they don't fit into a model that you've established for 'perfect children', then you need to learn to lay in the bed that you have made. Simply speaking, if you are going to dish it out, you'd better be able to take at least as much as you've given. After all, why shouldn't a person have a right to defend themselves?

It is really disturbing to me to think that this is the scrapbook industry. This is what women are becoming. Last I checked, we are still trying to fight through the glass ceilings of the world and the battle to reclaim that 25% earned wage differential from our male counterparts is still raging. We, as women have been oppressed for way to long and the majority are still suffering under some form of oppression. Do we really need to do it to ourselves as well? This is why women are often viewed as ill equipped to handle the rigors of running a country. Fortunately for us, those who would oppress women as a gender have not really caught on to the depth of disparity to which we've fallen. I can honestly say, as a woman, that if they did catch on, they would be much more successful in their endeavors because they could just leave us to denigrate and destroy our own senses of self worth in a nice bout of gender genocide. We really don't need men to tear us down, we can do it quite nicely amongst ourselves, thank you very much.

Whatever happened to women being representative of mother earth? Whatever happened to the ideology of the female being the nurturing force that helped maintain balance when chaos ran rampant? Was that all in my mind?
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I apologize if I've jumped around a bit...I have so much going through my head as it pertains to this topic; it's really hard to take all of those cerebral musings and put them into a comprehensible entry. TFR