The splattered life of a Fashion Blogger

By Hand On The Hip - 8/24/2017

Hello guys!

Blogging about fashion is an enthralling experience, but there are ups and downs about everything in life. Although our lives may look glamorous from the outside, there are a lot of hardships we face in the process. I am sure every blogger out there can relate to this. And before you get on to reading this, let me warn you that there's going to a lot of ranting and whining happening in this post, but to keep it light I have also created some memes to make this post more fun! :D


"Are you a model?"
I sympathize with those who don't know or understand what the job profile of a fashion blogger is, but when people ask me if I am a model, as much as it might seem like a compliment, it's not! Modelling is deffo a part of being a fashion blogger, but it's not the same! I mean, fashion blogging is such a popular concept these days. How about actually reading my posts for once and understanding what a blogger does?



Living a dual life
As I am not a full-time blogger, I am always working two jobs. It gets pretty challenging to go to office and attend events. I always end up missing all the great events because it happens on weekdays :( And even if I do manage to get a couple of hours, Bangalore traffic always plays a major role in wasting a whole lot of my time!


The constant need to look good always
I usually wear no make-up to work. If you saw me on a normal day, you'd probably not recognize me. But when people find it hard to believe that a fashion blogger has no make-up on or probably does not have the perfect hair, it gets a tad bit annoying. After all, we are humans too, right?


We got bills to pay, yo!
Getting paid on time or not getting paid at all is the biggest drawback of being your own boss. You have to constantly keep nagging the PR folks or the brand owners to pay up. It's very difficult to find people in this business who are professional when it comes to payment. A lot of PR guys or brands keep looking for free publicity, not even barter. Isn't it unfair for you to get your marketing done for free while we actually put in so much effort to make you look good? Well, remember guys, it always has to be a win-win situation, otherwise you're wasting your time!


Photographer tantrums
Although I have been blessed to meet wonderful photographers in my blogging career, there have been one or two outliers who have thrown a tantrum or two. "Hey, I like you in this bralette, can you wear just this for a shoot?", "Can you show your cleavage a bit?", "Can we take a trip together and shoot there?" are some of the most retarded requests I have received from photographers! It gets super tricky to deal with these people.


Irrelevant review requests
A fashion blogger blogs about fashion. Some of us do blog about food, travel and other related topics out of our own interest. But sometimes we do get a lot of crazy requests that are nowhere in the list of areas we would like to cover on our blogs.


"You don't have enough followers"
While on one hand, I completely agree that it's important to have followers so that there is high reach for your posts, but on the other, did you guys know you could buy followers? If you think about it, let's say Blogger A has bought 10000 followers and about 10% of the lot are genuine followers whereas Blogger B has around 2000 followers, but they are real people and not bots. Which one would you pick? I strongly believe in generating good content rather than gaining followers and that's something brands should focus on as well.


Creep alert
A lot of women get bombarded by DMs or emails from creepy guys or hate messages. This is a very common problem even otherwise, but it just increases by a large amount when your pictures are public. Thank God for the "Block" option on Instagram!


Picture/content theft
I have seen that a lot of my pictures have been stolen/not been given credits for. It gets tedious to track these guys down. But that's the risk we have to take, right?


Unwanted advice from irrelevant people
"Why don't you monetize your blog?" is a very common question a lot of people have asked me. Ideas related to fashion, design, beautification of my blog are always welcome, but there are certain things about my blog I don't wanna disrupt. For instance, I am not a big fan of Google Ads floating around. When the time is right, I will explore this side of the blogging world myself.


We don't always get free stuff!
Sometimes people just assume that everything you own is free! But being a fashion lover, it's just that we have this obsessive need to shop wherever we go :D And hence things just pile up!



My life as a blogger is full of surprises. I have enjoyed every minute of it. I have met some inspiring people too! But sometimes, things can get a little challenging. I am sure the rest of my blogger fam would agree. This one's for you guys! Hope you enjoyed reading it.

Love,
Hand On The Hip

P.S. To create this, I took the help of my bae Suman, who is not only my make-up artist, proof reader, concept curator and stylist, but also my newly appointed impromptu photographer :D Special credits to another friend of mine, Prateek, for being such a sport and posing for a picture.

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3 comments

  1. Brilliant! Awesome post and great presentation :D You do us fans proud

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  2. Such a fun post to read.. I can correlate to so many of the points and the memes are super cute!!

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