Day 7 of the Blogtober Challenge – the meaning of your blog name

I started blogging in 2008. Back then I was fancy free, earning a good salary and devoting all my time to pleasure. I didn’t know anything about social media – I just knew how to write.

That’s how Vogue Busy Beauty was born. It’s a silly name for a silly blog. In fairness, it was never intended to be anything but…all the same, the content stands in such sharp contrast to that of Sophie’s Voice that you could be forgiven for thinking that it had been written by another author.

I was. That young woman doesn’t exist anymore. Well, there’s a tiny part of her buried under a pile of other labels I’ve worn recently – mature pregnant mum, first time mum, lost mum, frump, shut in, second mature pregnant mum, happy mother – but she’s not relevant to me any longer.

I left Vogue Busy Beauty in a trashy hotel room in San Marino the morning after I conceived my first child.
She wasn’t relevant anymore. About 4 months later I didn’t even fit in her clothes. Even more strangely – after all the good times we’d had together – I didn’t miss her at all.

I guess you could say that I had outgrown my party girl alter-ego. If you want to visit her, she’s preserved on this very website. Don’t expect a warm welcome though – not unless you go carrying martinis.

I stagnated for a long while after that. I had my first daughter and lost all my confidence. In everything really. I stayed in and…stayed in. For about a year. Then I dipped my toe back into life. I gave it a try and started to cock that up. I just couldn’t find an outlet for whatever it was that I needed to find an outlet for.

I had a terrible second pregnancy but the baby that arrived was the inspiration for my second blog. This time I knew that I had to pull life together before I became the dull, shy, awkward person that I had become after her elder sister was born.

It Took Two was born in March 2014. It was called It Took Two because it took a second baby to lift me out of my funk and set me on a course again. It started with a Facebook page and a tumblr account. Tumblr didn’t work at all. Nobody had the app and the only thing I really like about it is the layout.

I did keep plugging at it, though. I loved writing again and Facebook really helped me to up my game from nail polish colour and catwalk updates to the issues that mean so much to me now. I had time to work out where I wanted to focus and who I wanted to talk to. It also meant that I built up a really loyal core group of followers one by one. I’ll never take a single reader for granted after those early days of counting every single individual.

It got to a point, though, where people didn’t know what the name meant. When Mr Sophie’s Voice bought me a posh new laptop for Christmas we starting looking for a new name…I didn’t want to use my name because I’m not especially outgoing but what I write does tend to be slightly controversial so I decided to ‘own’ it.

After some discussion, I went with the suggestion of Mr Sophie’s Voice. He’s my investor, partner and collaborator now. I have creative control but we have the power of veto over each other’s work.

Ultimately, I couldn’t do it without him. I’m Sophie, first and foremost – but I never forget that I’m Mrs B too.

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