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“I don’t shine, if you don’t shine.”
I said in my previous post I’d been thinking about Shine Theory without really explaining exactly what it is and why the hell I’m so obsessed with it.
I first heard about Shine Theory through the ladies of Call Your Girlfriend and after a bit of Google-ing I found out that it was Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sou who partly pioneered the phrase on the Internet.
As Friedman’s original NY Magazine article points out, we unfortunately live in a world where – whether we like it or not – women are pitted against each other. We see it everywhere from something as simple as that FOMO feeling seeing a Facebook friend get engaged to so-called ‘feuding’ female celebrities and public ‘cat fights’ over Twitter. Giving the example Beyonce and Kelly Rowland, Friendman’s analogy gives us another option. Instead of feeling intimidated by women who are supposedly doing better than us let’s stuff those feelings in a box and put them in another box and smash it with a hammer*. Then once you’ve stuffed those feelings away, befriend said successful woman.
In Friedman’s mind “…surrounding yourself with the best people doesn’t make you look worse by comparison. It makes you better.”
Or in other words “I don’t shine if you don’t shine.”
Shine Theory cuts through the chords of the systematic jealousy and ranking us women immediately reach towards when looking at those who are more successful than us and says ‘Hey, let’s stop competing, there’s room at the top for all of us, and I want a group of hella supportive awesome women at my side right there with me when I hit the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.’
So how and why is this at all relevant to the blogging community?
I think it’s fair to say the blogging is mostly comprise of cis-gendered women (there are of course exceptions, but Shine Theory applies to all genders and sexualities in my opinion) and when keeping up with the ‘blogging Joneses’ can so easily turn into a numbers game, competitiveness and comparisons start slipping into our mindset.
We start ranking ourselves against the success of other bloggers. We start thinking ‘how on Earth do they have x amount of followers when I put in just as much work’. We start putting out those tweets about how Tanya Burr doesn’t deserve her success or Zoella shouldn’t have gotten a book deal. We’ve all been there. Even me (especially me, in regards to Zoella). As a result we shy away from connecting with other women because of what they’ve achieved. Our feelings of jealousy become a manifestation of how we feel about ourselves and we start to believe there’s no room for us at the top of the blogging tree.
Luckily on the whole I think we in the blogsphere are very good at quashing these icky feelings. Whether we realise it or not I see bloggers exhibit the very behaviours Shine Theory preaches all the time. It’s one thing I really admire about our community is that we’re very open to connecting to each other, making friends, and pulling each other up instead of knocking each other down.
Now back on a personal level, I mentioned how I’ve not been brilliant at this (old all-girls school habits never die). But now I’m a little older and facing a more focus new year, I’m bored of trying to compete when it comes to my female friendships. Like I mentioned in my January retrospective, I want to reach out to the community more and the first step is advocating for and befriending women who’s follower counts, flawless selfies and perfect flat lays intimate me.
because true confidence is infectious
because powerful women make the greatest friends
because people know you by the company you keep
because we want the strongest, happiest, smartest women in our corner
So let’s kick this theory into high gear. Leave me a comment recommending be bloggers you love and are shining stars.
Let’s share some love.
*cyber cookies for people who get this reference.
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