Chicks For Free

This is a reply to Jenny's post today on the Mama Drama blog "hosted" by the Houston Chronicle. Her issue is (in light of the recent writer's strike in Hollywood) why bloggers are generally also not compensated for their work.



This is an issue that is very near to my heart, so when I sat down to write a response, I found that I could not contain myself to a three or four sentence response. I certainly want to note that I have no desire to malign the many very talented men bloggersout there. (Men in fields traditionally dominated by women suffer the same financial disadvantages as women and also frequently have to deal with image issues that can make their lives uncomfortable. Think of the historic views of male nurses, and dancers).



When thinking about the problem of unpaid blogging, the first thing I wonder is, how many of these unpaid bloggers out in the blogosphere are women. Our society has a tendency to not value the work of women. Painters and sculptors (who have mostly been men throughout the history of our culture (never mind why for now)) are revered amongst artists, film editors, needleworkers, lace crocheters and quilters have a history of being ignored.



Women express their creativity in many ways and almost always there are many who pursue their interests without even thinking about getting paid, because they love doing so, and our society (be it due to market forces, supply and demand or whatever) tends to be reluctant to value women's work financially.



As a Middle Eastern dancer and teacher of dance, I see the same problem daily. There are so many dancers out there that restaurants, conferences and even friends are able to pay next to nothing for performances and anyone with a few lessons has started providing belly dance classes to others. (Me included). There are a lot of us out there, so the supply is large and it exceeds demand. The value sinks.

Part of what I find interesting is this whole (in my opinion masculine) idea that something is only valuable when it has a monetary value. I like to resist that belief. I like to think of art as having intrinsic value beyond financial defintions. I want to regard teaching crafts, being creative, dancing as a way of being part of a community and sharing and I like to work with other people who value those acitivities.



On the other hand it is inherently unfair for a big corporation to pay some people for work and ignore another group of workers (whom they could very easily pay) simply because they can. I wonder what it is about our society that values some "work" and not other and values these things in only one term - money. I wonder why we have become so dollar obsessed, that we can not allow for other things to have worth unless we are a hobbyist in the same field. I wonder if the Mama Drama blog at the Chronicle were a popular blog on business practices and skills (or on sports) run by men (and don't forget mothering is a job requiring skill, hard labor and intelligence), if the Chronicle would be more willing to pay its writers.



I suppose it really doesn't matter. As long as we are imprisoned by this particular part of capitalist philosophy which suggests that when supply exceeds demand the relative value of something is worthless. Unfortunately this means regardless of how talented or skilled the individual might be the value is still the same. We have lived in a hyper matierialist age for a long time now. Perhaps it is time to find some other values to compete with the almighty dollar. Its val;ue is going fown the tubes now anyway, maybe American Ingenuity, Creativity, Sincerity, Generosity and Self Reliance are values we can once again embrace.