The other night I did something that I had never done before: I Googled myself.
(No, seriously, I’d never done it, not once. Seriously. Because, you know, I’d heard you could go blind from it.)
Here’s the thing about Googling yourself: once you start, you can’t stop. Even when you go through a page of Google listings that have nothing to do you – I share my name, apparently, with numerous Irish women of the 19th century, and at least one high school sophomore in Chicago with a distinguished record in middle-distance running – it’s fascinating. And it’s all the more fascinating when you hit pages upon pages of links to references to yourself. Look – there’s me mentioned in the Globe And Mail! There’s my AlphaMom interview! There’s my first peer-reviewed academic article! There’s that cheesy essay about being Prime Minister that I wrote as an undergrad! Look, everyone: my 15 (fractions of) gigabytes of fame!
It is, in some respects, I suppose, the 21st century equivalent of rifling through a shoebox of mementos – the newspaper clippings that your mom collected and kept in a ragged file folder, the tattered certificates of achievement, that undergraduate essay that got published, somewhere, the picture of your graduating class – except that the things you find aren’t things that you’ve saved – they’re things that the Internet has saved. The virtual detritus of an unfamous but not entirely obscure life. Which makes it a little surreal. I came across that aforementioned undergraduate essay, along with a handful of professional academic articles, a lot of blog-related miscellany and an assortment of virtual newspaper clippings about awards and speeches and the various whatnots of an overfunctioning young woman trying to prove herself in a world that records bits and pieces of that life in code, and holds it out for anyone to see.
That Google search revealed, in some small and completely messed up way, an index of my life (and, of course, my blog life, which may or may not be the same thing) as it has been captured on the virtual screen. It is, for better or for worse, my biography as it appears to the virtual world. So I thought, why not use it to introduce myself? It is, after all, BlogHer week, and we should really be trying to get to know each other, better, no? And what better way to get to know a blogger than through her online profile? Herewith, then – Five Things That You Can Learn About Me Through Google:
1) Despite my protestations to the contrary, I am Tracy Flick. Rather, I was Tracy Flick, once upon a time. I am so not kidding. My career as an undergraduate was one long exercise in look how good I am! I am smart! And a good person! OMG I can totally save the world!
2) It was kind of sweet, though. I meant well. Also, I figured that if I played my cards right, I could be Prime Minister.
3) But then I decided that I hated politics, and committed myself to the pursuit of the philosophic life. In the pursuit of which, I embraced misanthropy, and publicly (academically) defended Hannibal Lector as a tragic Rousseauan figure. I’m still proud of that, as I am for having, in my first peer-reviewed book review, called out Erich Segal for writing what is possibly the worst book on comedy (v.v. the history of classical thought) ever written in the history of the world, ever.
4) Misanthropy gets old fast, though, so I turned my professional interests to love, sex and virtue in the history of political philosophy. Because, you know, love and sex are much more fun to think and write about than are grumpy, bourgeois-hating old men who may or may not indulge in a little cannibalism. Which brought me around to the field of academic research that I stuck with, which was women – and specifically motherhood – in the history of political philosophy. How did I get from misanthropic critiques of bourgeois liberalism to motherhood? Basically, this: they are, if done properly, the same thing.
5) Which brought me here, to the state of being and creating that is Her Bad Mother. Here – the domain of my Bad Motherness, Badtopia, Badmotherlandia, the Badlands – speaks for itself, I think. But if you’re new to HBM, and don’t feel like spending hours reading the archives, or if you just want a refresher on what I look and sound like (I am so much more, after all, than just words on a screen) Google offers you this HBM Live With LeahPeah On AlphaMom TV moment:
It’s two years old, but I haven’t really changed all that much. At all, really. So there you go. Just look for the blond bobbed, recovering-Tracy-Flick-with-babe-in-arms in San Francisco. That’ll be me.
(Um, hey? You should totally do this too! GoogleHer yourself! You know, for fun and edification.)
