Why I'm not releasing a Best Female Bloggers list - ever again

Some days as a content creator you get to make really easy decisions and other days you get to make some truly shitty, awful and difficult decisions. Over the weekend I made a tough decision to stop producing my world famous Best Female Travel Bloggers list. Each year I spend a considerable amount of time researching, following and observing an array of female content creators and I lovingly craft an article that celebrates the phenomenal work that they are doing. It was up until recently an absolute joy to create.

Over the last year I’ve become slightly jaded about the marketing behind International Women’s Day, the way that corporate men are taking over as speakers (c’mon guys can’t we have just ONE day to ourselves) and handing out cupcakes and and inbox flooded with pink pitches for #iwd2022

It just gave me the ick. A double ick.

So this year I’ve made the tough decision to not publish a Best Female Bloggers of 2022 list or one in the foreseeable future.

Here are a few of my personal reasons as to why I’m not publishing a Best Female Travel Bloggers of 2022 list.

The Pink Marketing

I felt the first real ick recently when my inbox was invaded by a raft of pink marketing pitches and invitations to celebrate women over the past few weeks. Seemingly only straight white women and excluding transwomen and non-binaries. The team at Traveling Honeybird believe in inclusivity and are LGTBQI allies. I wasn’t comfortable in marketing products that have been turned pink to celebrate women. Especially when a lot of those pink, lady friendly products come with a price hike. Because ladies are clearly frivolous with their money. This is known as the pink tax;

It is a marketing ploy used by companies to target products at women by changing the colour of the product or packaging to make it look like it is specifically for women. However the exact same product is made “For Men” but sold cheaper. – Tilly Money has a great article on this.

I’m exceptionally judgemental of any pitch that comes my way and unless your marketing team and products align with my values, it’s a hard pass. Which is why you’ve seen so little sponsored content over the past 2 years. If you’d like to know more check out my Work with Me info.

The things I saw

Shook me. I am actually shook. The last 2 years has been incredibly difficult for everyone. The travel industry across the globe has been shattered by the global panini. Like many I sat at home, I took up a few new non-travel related hobbies and I doom scrolled. A lot. Probably far too much. And I was saddened and shocked by the distribution of misinformation that was and still is occurring. I saw in a Facecbook Group a very well known blogger asking people who had been paid to promote the vaccine to reach out as they had questions. I saw people spread misinformation about vaccines, governments and create fear. Then there was the body shaming and attacking of fellow bloggers.

It left me feeling sad that such a supportive community I was proud to be apart of was being destroyed from within.

The world of content creation has changed.

For the good! It’s not all doom and gloom, though some days it does feel like that. The world of content creation has changed. So many wonderful bloggers are no longer purely bloggers. I’ve seen some amazing people pivot into YouTube, TikTok, podcasts and even starting families. It’s fascinating and exciting to see people develop and grow into new areas.

It just didn’t feel right to narrow this list down to only bloggers and there was more than 22 amazing content creators that I wanted to include. Sorry, not sorry to the PR firms who regularly use my lists to find new talent.

Did you know you can listen to my podcast Travels from the Kitchen Sink? Want to be a guest? Let me know!

So what comes next?

Over the next few weeks I’ll be busy compiling some amazing lists of fantastic content creators who are breaking through some of the newer medias, such as YouTube (ok I know that’s not new, but some people are absolutely kicking ass with their long form YouTubes), TikTok creators and podcasters. I still want to celebrate the community and the amazing content that people are creating. Which for many of us we create for free in the hope that ad revenue, affiliate sales and potentially a sponsored post or two will help off set our time and expenses. Those exposure dollars don’t pay the bills.

Until then I can’t wait to see what rabbit holes I fall down as I let the algorithms take me on adventures.