My Blog Mentor

  When I began blogging, I came into this cyber world thinking that keeping a blog is just a simple task of jotting down anything that comes across my mind. As time passed I came to realize that it is really not that simple. Being a complete newbie in the blogosphere, I spend a lot of my time reading other blogs and hoping to learn from them how to be more intriguing and how to stay relevant to my reader. I have found through my journey to be a blogger that a good blog needs consistency in uploading new posts, coherency in tone and content and actually takes a lot of effort and time on the bloggers part. One of my favorite blogs I have ever come across features all those qualities and more.  +Q Perfume Blog is a blog completely dedicated to fragrances and the author Simone Shitrit explores every aspect of the perfume industry from reviews of products to interviews and even how perfume ads may aid in exploiting females.  Simone is very active in the perfume industry, as she is actually a Sao Paulo, Brazil based fragrance designer; a fragrance evaluator and freelance writer for Brazilian beauty magazines; an exclusive fragrance consultant for one of Brazil’s largest news Broadcasters and she even gives lectures and promote events for large perfume brands.  And on top of all that she is also the author and editor for the +Q Perfume Blog and the +Q Perfume Trends & Blends Blog. With that many roles to fill I would imagine Simone to be an extremely busy woman but she has somehow found time to post new blogs regularly. She began this blog in July 2008 and has written anywhere from 3 up to 36 new blogs every month ever since.  All her blog posts are very rich in content and are all very text heavy with a few illustrations.  She does not simply tell her readers her opinion but describes each fragrance she reviews in great detail and even comments on all the perfume ads for things she liked and didn't like.  Her audiences are usually consumers wanting an experts voice on a certain product and consumers wanting to know the next big trend before making blind purchases.

 Her latest blog post was posted just 2 days ago on April 2^nd, titled Perfume Trends –Spring & Summer 2013& 2014, where she predicts the next big thing in the perfume industry.  She talks about how fragrances are seasonal just like fashion items and that there is a move towards more tropical scents in the upcoming seasons. Besides just the notes themselves, she talks about how there is a trend called “Nomadism” where manufacturers are going to start making more on-the-go products to match modern people’s nomadic life style. 

  My favorite thing about her blog is that even though she works in the industry she isn’t afraid to voice her opinions about things that the fragrance industry is doing wrong.  Besides teaching her readers about the newest fragrance trend, she also educates them on not falling for advertisers gender stereotypical traps, much like I hope to do on my blogs. In her blog post Sexual Degradation, Stereotypes and Perfume Advertising, she says “ sexism and treating people, especially women, like meat became the newest way to shock and promote a fragrance”. She points out that a lot of perfume ads put women in a position of submission and suggests that she needs to use her sexuality in order to get what she wants. In the blog post, she proves herself with many ads of name brand perfumes such as Dolce & Gabbana and Sean John and all those ads featured very sexually appealing women and show them being dominated by a man. 

  Her views about how media and advertisement contribute to the spread of gender stereotypes match mine very closely and they back up what I have said in the past about media objectifying women. Especially since she is a professional in the field herself, her opinions are very credible to me.  Even with all the similarities, our blogs are still quite different in that Simone mostly talks about fragrance trends and her opinions whereas my blog focuses mainly on gender stereotypes.  I came across her site in search of finding material for my next blog but learned a valuable lesson being a great blogger really takes passion and effort, and gained a mentor in the blogging world instead.