You've probably never heard of Leigh Nicole Ward.
And that's the problem.
After I posted pictures of beautiful lead actresses virtually everyone has heard of and gone through enough beautiful supporting actresses maybe a few people have heard of, it was inevitable that I would start posting pictures of beautiful actresses that no one had ever heard of. Who would be interested in Leigh Nicole Ward, except Ms. Ward herself and her relatives (and, admittedly, myself)? Well, maybe her friends. But I posted pictures of her in 2013 for one simple reason - I needed to fill space and keep my blog going.
And then there was the conundrum of posting pictures of actresses many people had heard of whose work I'd never seen . . . like "Gray's Anatomy" star Ellen Pompeo.
Here's the issue. When you publish a blog, you have to keep posting regularly to ensure that your followers will come back. When you have a pictorial blog dedicated to one theme, posting fresh content can be difficult. When your theme is beautiful women, it's damn near impossible.
Inevitably, most of the women that appear on such a blog will be actresses and models, because for actresses, beauty, though not required, is still an asset; for models, it's a necessity. But while models are known primarily from still photos, actresses are known for playing roles in media involving action and motion. In other words, the best way to appreciate an actress is to see her work. As I've already indicated, I've never seen Ellen Pompeo in "Gray's Anatomy" or anything else. And the only way I could see Leigh Nicole Ward in anything is if I see local theater or watch local TV commercials in the Boston area. (I became aware of her though her modeling work for a local business in Boston, but I can't remember how I learned her name.) But I did make this prediction for her back in 2013 - "It's not a question of whether she makes the big time, but rather, when."
And what did I base that (erroneous) prediction on? Her talent . . . or her beauty? Am I celebrating her talent . . . or objectifying her looks?
So, I didn't post pictures of the number of actresses that I did because they could act well. I posted their pictures because I thought they were beautiful. And even though feminine beauty has been my blog's raison d'être, what message am I conveying when I post actresses whose work I have never seen? Yes, they're beautiful, but shouldn't I also include them on my blog because I think they can act?
In truth, many of the actresses I have featured - particularly younger ones - are women I'd never heard of until twenty minutes before, in TV shows or movies I'd only heard of in less than that time. In describing their credentials as actresses, I did little more than list their credits, with no personal experience of their work.
How could I justify that? Well, since I didn't really have any personal experience with their work, and since I didn't have any particular interest in them, I figured that some young man, some kid who followed a particular woman in a particular TV series or movie franchise, would see it and like it. Someone out there would want to see a picture of some actress he'd liked in a TV show on the CW "network" or on basic cable that he enjoyed watching, even if I myself had only heard of the show ten minutes before I wrote up the post. That's when a blog stops being a personal form of expression and starts being hackwork. I think I'm posting a picture of an actress I've never heard of before and only found out about through random searches to please people in my audience who have heard of her, but what I'm really doing is trying to post pictures of as many women as possible, even if I've hardly even heard of them, to create more content and get people to keep looking at my blog.
In other words, quantity over quality.
And even though dancer Eva Burton of the Oregon Ballet Theatre is certainly a beautiful woman . . .
A blog, it seems, is no online medium for a subject like beautiful women if all I'm doing is posting pictures of women for the sake of itself without any firsthand experience of their talents in whatever profession made them famous. If I want to celebrate feminine beauty, I have to limit myself to only a few actresses or models - women I have firsthand knowledge of - and present examples of their images on a Web site, which doesn't have to be updated once every three to four days.
No comments:
Post a Comment