When I was freelancing, I found myself doing a lot of odd jobs within the media sphere. I regularly appeared on Midday, a panel show on then-TV3 (now Virgin Media One) where we would discuss the issues of the day and, ideally, disagree about them.
I would opine authoritatively – a friend’s Dad once told me, not entirely complimentarily, I thought, that I was “a great bullshitter” – on topics from children watching porn to organic food and chronic pain. (I am 99% sure that I once asked, on air, why people with chronic pain don’t simply opt for amputation as a straightforward and low-stakes solution to their problem.)
On the same TV station, I would pop up semi-regularly as a style commentator in a segment styled after the good old-fashioned “fashion police”. (At the same time, I was working as a magazine stylist and lost out on one cover shoot job because the personality in question remembered my pithy remarks about her awards-show get-up from the previous year and didn’t want to work with me.)
I was also frequently approached to write op-ed type columns for independent.ie. One column is titled, “Why is it that no one can take criticism any more?” I was basically the Joe Rogan of Irish media; I took against the snowflakes of this world before it was cool.
Another column was about Kim Kardashian. The title? “No, Kim, it’s not slut shaming – we just don’t like you.” (Who is this royal “we”? Me and my Mum? Me and my friends? A lot of my friends really do like Kim Kardashian, so that can’t be it; I bought her perfume as a birthday gift for one of them.)
I prided myself on having an opinion about everything. If called upon, I could write a first-person column lambasting – or praising – pretty much anyone or anything. Perhaps my time in secondary school competing in the Concern debates has something to do with this, or maybe it was more to do with the difficulties of being freelance; if you want to do well, to get work and to keep getting work, you don’t say no when said work is offered.
As a form of publicity, being opinionated worked. People knew my name – even if they then refused to work with me. That cover star was not the only one; when I took on an odd job doing up media packs for an influencer agency, I sent one blogger a text asking if she wanted to meet for coffee to chat about a recent (mild, and now entirely forgotten) scandal she had been embroiled in. “I’d love that!” she responded. Later that day, I received a call. “She doesn’t want you to contact her directly and feels very uncomfortable that I’m working with you.”
It turns out that some publicity is bad publicity, after all.
When I started this Substack, my plan was to write one op-ed each week, along with one more personal piece of writing, perhaps focusing on my life in the US, struggles with new motherhood or emigration in general.
The money diary was to be left behind with my Patreon URL, something my sister warned me would not go down well. “That’s your most popular feature!” she protested. “You have to keep it!” Of course, she was right – it has become my most popular piece of writing on Substack, as it was on Patreon, and is, I suspect, directly responsible for a large proportion of my paid subscribers.
As it happens, it’s a good thing I have the money diary because the opinion pieces have proved a lot more challenging than I ever would have anticipated (writing about my own life has always come naturally to me, probably due to a combination of my being self-obsessed and always being willing to turn the most tragic situation into a good yarn).
I’ve asked myself, more than once, Do I just… not have any strong opinions any more?!
Rest assured: that’s not it. But the theme, or flavour, of my opinions has changed. I have lost whatever enthusiasm I once had for celebrity stories, fashion faux pas or blogger scandals (on the latter point, fine, I still love a blogger scandal, but I keep those in a dedicated WhatsApp group entitled, somewhat tongue-in cheek, “influencer hate group”).
It’s not that I don’t care about what x celebrity has to say about y (I confess, Kim Kardashian and her whole “people have no work ethic” idiocy almost got a good go), rather that I am simply too sleep-deprived to be able to properly gird my loins for the inevitable slew of responses I’d get, should I stride publicly on to the debate stage.
When I wrote about fashion for The Irish Times, and later, when I spoke about it live on TV3’s fashion panel, the critique that elicited was of a very particular type: that I, being fat, frizzy-haired and “badly dressed” (their verdict, not, obviously, mine) had no business talking about what anyone else wore.
I wondered if they would lay the same criticism at the doors of middle-aged and unfit sports writers, who felt no reluctance when it came to evaluating the performance of elite athletes in international competitions, but decided that, no, they wouldn’t. Women are only allowed to be critical if they are perfect; men may be critical (and often it’s not even thought of as “criticism”, rather “feedback” or “evaluation”) simply because they are men. Female sports commentators, for example, are not given the same reverence as their male counterparts and must have several Olympic medals to their names before they’re allowed to have their say.
Anyway, the criticism didn’t bother me – until it did. I felt like Encanto’s Luisa, carrying donkey after donkey on my back until, inevitably, I ran out of strength (and back space).
I don’t mean to blame the victim (in this case, me!), or to assert that women should resist the urge to share their opinions, lest they incur the ire of the internet, or, more specifically Twitter, but at a certain point I guess I started to ask myself, is it worth it?
In some cases, yes, it is. It is worth having – and voicing – an opinion on issues that are important to you. It is worth speaking out about whatever injustices feel important to you; it is worth having, and using, your voice, in whatever way feels good and right.
I find myself, every now and then, holding an opinion that I want to express – and I do, most of the time, either here or on Instagram Stories or, occasionally, on Twitter, although I confess I barely use Twitter any more, not because I think it’s a nasty space but because I get salty when my witty tweets get no attention – but a lot of the time I just feel exhausted at the prospect of having to then defend said opinion for hours on end, or, worse, having to engage with people whose opinions I do not consider valid by virtue of them being based on bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny or some other iteration of same.
All of this is to say: I’m giving myself permission not to write a weekly opinion piece. I’m taking the pressure off, so to speak, and leaving this space free for whatever feels important to write about in any given week.
If you ever want to know what I think about something, feel free to reach out! And if there’s something you’ve seen me speak about on Instagram, or Twitter, and you’d like me to flesh out here, I would love to know. I’m all ears – and eyes – when it comes to (constructive) criticism, suggestion and feedback, honestly. I just think I’m done rabble-rousing for rabble-rousing’s sake.
Famous last words?
I Used to be Very Opinionated