Alright, you little freshman bitches, air raid!*

This is going to sound all kinds of hypocritical, considering I post sometimes scathing reviews on a site with a URL of "Iwillfuckingtearyouapart," but I'm not really a fan of the whole "I'm a bitch, ask me how" genre of blogs. I know. Pot, meet kettle.

The trend for a lot of women bloggers these days seems to be marketing themselves as foul-mouthed, stiletto-wearing bitches with bad attitudes, alcoholic tendencies, and fierce clothing choices. Either that or tawdry sex kittens who are reclaiming the words "whore" or "slut." And frankly, it almost never rings true. They put on the persona, trot out their quickly and carelessly written diatribes against whoever is pissing them off that day, and wrap it up in an "I'm just bitchy that way, bite me" bow. But it's vacant, self-aggrandizing, escapist, and ultimately untrue.

I get it. The internet allows a delicious anonymity, a seductive arena for self-expression that allows us to be whoever the hell we want. It allows me to masquerade as someone who knows what the hell she's talking about, and I get to do the very things I dis in the preceding paragraph. My hypocrisy knows no bounds, but it's my review and I'll be judgmental if I want to. Bite me? Shit, I did it again.

This little exercise in futility was fueled by The Shoewhore Who Cooks: Bow Down Bitches, which is not to say that the Shoewhore is either a whore or a bitch, thus proving my point. There's very little cooking and not a lot of shoes, either, so the title is a bit of a misnomer. I expected something along the lines of this. What I got was a rather nice, sexy-seeming, moderately funny woman from the Midwest who likes to cook.

I like the design. It's uncluttered and easy to read. There's no about page, though, so I don't have any back story. I need back story, people. The blog has been around just since May, but she moved from elsewhere, so there's not a lot here.

I read the entire blog, and I didn't want to gouge my eyes out with the heel of one of her stilettos. There are some marginally funny pictures from other places, some memes, and lots of ellipses. Shoewhore makes some grammatical snafus of the apostrophe variety, along with neglecting to capitalize consistently. She does post about shoes (just twice -- not much whorage there, eh?), but I don't like any of them. She went 38 years without a driver's license and doesn't go anywhere alone, which kind of boggles my mind. But she likes Eric Balfour, who is in one of the sexiest movies ever and I'd lick him from head to toe, steamy little devil that he is, so I can't hate on her too much.

She writes some amusing (and disgusting) stories. Some could be downright hilarious if polished up a little bit. But for me the writing just kind of sat there on the screen, lolling about sloppily as I am wont to do on weekends. Or always. It didn't grab me, I didn't laugh out loud, and there wasn't any finesse or flair. I like the Shoewhore -- she seems like a fun lady with a sexy relationship and a healthy sense of humor. But some of the writing, for me, was a bit of a snooze.

I don't know your background, Shoewhore, so I don't know why you blog. It doesn't seem like you're serious about writing, but if you are, tighten up, edit, reread, and polish. Dig deeper, give us more heart and soul and sex. These posts seem flung up on the screen without much care.

If this is just an exercise in community, in relationship building, in saying whatever is on your mind, that's fine, too. But take a little more care with your craft, and don't be afraid to go deeper. You don't have to be funny all the time, and honestly sometimes the funny just didn't work for me. There's more to you than bitchy avarice -- a lot more, in fact, because I saw very little meanness or greed on your blog. Consider a rename of your blog, or live up to the title more, if that's who you want to be. But I hope you don't -- I hope you toss out the surface veneer and show us who you really are.

Today I give you





because I like you and you seem like a fun lady and I feel like you have potential. Keep blogging, edit your writing but not yourself. Let us see more of who you are, what matters to you. You read some excellent bloggers: let them influence you.



*Darla (Parker Posey), from Dazed and Confused