What Am I Reading? Young Women

I read the blogs of a lot of young women. Sure, some identify as preppies, some are clearly artists and creative people, others are lawyers, others are brides who have finished the getting married activities. But at my age it's most important that they are young. In their 20's, or early 30's. For the most part they don't have children yet. And in my life children were the defining act, so given limited imagination and an underdeveloped sense of the political that that's how I categorize others. Are they in the age where the question of children or no children hasn't yet been answered? Are they in the age where they are still wondering what to do next, where each act doesn't happen inside a life with definitions in place?

The blogs that stand out right now, for me? And let me be clear, I am making no statements on overall excellence. Just for me. And I read all in my Reader window, every day.

• east side bride - love the semi-permanent scowl and the groom fashion


• even*cleveland - her charming whimsical Polyvore outfits, to go map-making for example


• first milk - design, but personal


• Good Mouse, Bad Mouse - it's her photo you see in the window there along with her cool post labels. With posts called "Yearn" and "Stare", what more is there to say? And she's going to South Africa...


• Landlocked Mermaid - I like the Italian American family details


• Monograms and Manicures - the uber-preppy but so on-the-go, so enthusiastic, so purposeful she transcends the category


• Peonies and Polaroids - simply lovely writing and photographs from Scotland with a sly sense of humor


• Puttin' on the G.R.I.T.S. - A Southern preppy girl with a great story of a boyfriend named Country, the possible end of that relationship, and now making Christian about to be born-again noises


• what possessed me - super-smart city girl, irreverent, one of the funniest posts ever here


• communicatrix - marketing and advertising without using business jargon


• carboniferous - a grad student who still wants to buy dresses

Why these girls, for so they seem to me? Juicy stories. Juicy stories and good pictures and evocative writing. Details of lives I have not and will not live. And some maternal instinct. I wish good outcomes for all these girls. Who would not, I imagine, want me to call them girls at this point. But I mean girls in the fierce 12-year old sense, in the sense of this Dar Williams song. Which despite my usual extreme horror of sentimentality (unless it's about my children of course in which case I can cry at a piece of crumpled paper on a carpeted floor), made me cry the first 18 times I listened to it. So, collectively, I suppose I could say if I weren't a High WASP, you go. Girls.