Students Share Passion for Blogging
January 14, 2010 • By Caitlin Hardgrove, Contributing Writer
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Two years ago, Lizzie Donelan’s older sister, Emily moved to San Francisco. To stay in touch, the sisters started the blog “A Second Look.” Lizzie Donelan calls it “an adventure of two sisters and their exploration of fashion.”
Although they are on different sides of the country, the Donelan sisters have figured out a way to update their blog together – with a sort of “tag team” technique.
This is how they do it: one sister posts a new favorite look or style, and then the other tries to replicate the look with similar items that are more affordable.
“The other person’s assignment is to do a spin on it,” says Donelan, a JMU junior theatre major.
Donelan achieves many of her looks on a college budget by shopping at thrift stores like Goodwill and the Salvation Army. “I rarely shop at ‘real’ stores,” she said, adding that if money was no object, she would shop at Anthropologie, Chloe and Lark & Wolff.
Her fashion sense has also helped her contribute to the costume design for several JMU productions, including “Urinetown,” “City of Angels” and “Oklahoma.” In May, Donelan will design the costumes for Charles Mee’s “bobrauschenbergamerica.”
Although her theatre major keeps her busy, Donelan’s passion for fashion keeps her updating “A Second Look” using Blogspot.com.
“I’ve always been interested in writing, but actually working with the tangible pieces of clothing and researching different time periods is what inspires me,” she said.
Although there aren’t an overwhelming number of followers for “A Second Look,” Donelan says that isn’t what it is about. “We did it more for ourselves, to keep up with what we were inspired by as far as fashion and pop culture,” said Donelan.
Staying in touch with people was also one of the reasons why junior Allison Kinney started her blog. After some of her friends graduated last May, she created “Biddiewatch.”
“I don’t even really write about biddies…but I just came up with the name and it worked,” said Kinney, a music industry major.
Since watching “biddies” is not one of Kinney’s favorite pastimes, the topics of her posts cover a wide range of random events and stories that happen in her everyday life.
“When weird stuff happens, I write about it. And weird stuff happens a lot,” she said, continuing by saying she leads an abnormal life with “crazy hippies” for parents.
“I guess it doesn’t really have a real subject matter. It’s just unexpected, so you never really know what’s going to be there,” says Kinney.
From seeing 50 people dressed in ’80s clothing or wrapped in plastic wrap running across South Main, to her mother’s Halloween costume as a pimp, Kinney definitely has had her run-ins with the weird stuff.
“When I had the swine flu, 200 people had looked at [my blog], and since October I’ve had over 1,000 hits,” she says. “I guess since a lot of weird stuff happens to me, a bunch of people started reading it.”
Ashley Iaconetti was required to create a blog for her New Media course in the School of Media Arts and Design (SMAD), which is her major.
“The Confessions of Cosmo Woods” followed. She came up with the name by putting herself in the shoes of Reese Witherspoon’s character in “Legally Blonde.”
“I was thinking, ‘If Elle Woods had a blog…” and then played off of the fashion magazine, Elle, by substituting Cosmo, as in Cosmopolitan.
As the end of the course drew near, “I could technically stop writing in it…but I probably won’t,” Iaconetti said.
As she completed journalism courses such as News Writing and News Editing, she began to yearn for a freer writing atmosphere, and she feels she has found that within her blog.
“This is refreshing… I feel like a have my creative writing back,” Iaconetti said.
As the name of her blog suggests, the senior’s posts tend to “confess” her love for pop culture icons. Other obsessions include the “Twilight” movie series and ’80s boy band, New Kids on the Block.
“I’d say it’s a really girly and nerdy coverage of pop culture,” said Iaconetti. “I’ll take surface things – like things you hear on the radio, but I’ll get ‘nerdy-er’ about it. I’ll put my own spin on it.”
As a music industry minor, she says it is “probably more music related than anything else,” but adds that she enjoys writing about new movies that come out as well.
“I wanted it to be pop-culture based. Like to sound like Cosmo and E! Weekly’s quirky articles,” Iaconetti says.
Whether they post about their favorite new styles in fashion, strange occurrences in their everyday life, or their latest celebrity obsession, these JMU bloggers all agree on one thing for those wanting to start their own blog:
“Make the subject something that you would want to write about everyday – something that excites you!” says Donelan.
“Don’t write about something just because it’s cool or because other people will like it. Write for yourself, because it’s an expression of who you are,” Kinney adds. “And pictures of girls in bikinis always helps.”
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