The gender thing about blog templates

A male friend of mine found the current blog template I use for my prided blog, stunning, but too loud.

When I wanted to change the template of my other blog, another tech-savvy guy friend kept asking me to refrain from putting up a picture that make me look `sexy'. I find it rather protective of them, typically guy-thing.

Blogger templates should be professional. Agreed. But restrictions on colour and the `right' pictures are social psyche based impositions and wreak suppression that's prevalent across ethnicities.

Over the past few months, I have looked up hundreds of templates, and experimented by fixing close to 30 templates for my blogs. The trouble: some templates are aesthetically superb, but my feminine side cannot agree with their design. Design element in blog backgrounds, read virtual world, is an extension of real world's typecasting of what is feminine, and how a girl or woman template should look like. Rather, it is more a man's idea of what is a woman's design.

Popular blog template and theme websites have weird `girly' themes, with due respect to those who spent their precious hours making them. My hunch is, that it's mostly men, not women techies who decide the templates or blog backgrounds. Some guy techie out there hopes desperately to get his `feminine' perspective in creativity, resulting in templates such as Girly, Pink (am so so tired of it), sexy women, beach girl, and the likes. Their ultra casual and super-glam look gives me the impression that as a woman blogger, I should stick to the trivial and not so serious always.

Just take a look at these:

Pyzam, a good site for two-column blogger, myspace and hi5 layouts, has `its girly' category taking you through mundane loaded pink designs and sometimes even masculine templates that pass off as feminine designs. It's wildest piece is the She Devil layout, posted under...Girly. It has some feminine designs yes, but the issue is to do with the largescale feel.

Ourblogtemplates does not quite have women oriented themes, though it has specific colour based templates such as orange, pink, green, blue and black. Masculinity manifests in most of their templates too.

Bloggerblogtemplates that aggregates blogger templates and layouts, has its `girly' category overloaded too, with pink templates such as Cosmetic Girl, Shopaholic, Beauty Blog.

Such layouts have a standard design: a pic, or a caricature of sexy looking women, fair, and out of place to fit into ethnicity of those hundreds of women across countries. Frankly even I did not know what I was looking for, but that lovely caricature of a sexy working woman with her laptop is not me, with my overweight figure.

The btemplates pool of blogger layouts has somewhat different templates. Before your spirit lifts up with some aesthetically pleasing backgrounds, Working Woman template pops on you. It is thankfully pleasant shallow sea-blue-grean and not... Pink, albeit with the overdone anorexic `thinker woman at her laptop' . Its Complicated Girl template is no different in stereotyping - an hour-glass bimbette's silhouette set against the purple-designed black backdrop.

Are we as bloggers not pushing the sexy size thing a bit too far? In doing so, we limit blog template creatitivity into a box of boring thought trail. I am not saying they have no good designs at all, but in the onslaught of too many manly templates, I get lost. I know there are some good templates I have missed in the bargain.

Some great design websites get lost in the mad mad `google search results' race too.

For weeks, I lost hope in finding anything feminine that was serious too, until I stumbled upon Simply Fabulous Templates.

Simply Fabulous templates are different. They are, as the name says, fabulous. Because, they are made by a woman who thinks design like women. Femininity pervades each design background. The categories are a relief from what you come across in other blog skin aggregator websites.

You can find a category as niche as Pregnancy Templates, Fall templates, Masculine Templates (no other blog template aggregator has that category) and a host of other bold designs. Masculine Templates are from the perspective of this woman designer!

Another site called thecutestblogontheblog has interesting feminine designs and blog accessories too.

The two websites or blog design collections are a consolation in the world of million masculine templates that nearly govern all design. I am less aware of the wordpress themes and myspace layouts as I have worked less on them. Either ways, quick checks on wordpress themes and myspace layouts provided near-identical results.

Its about time popular blog design sites changed the gender perspective on design. Else, the blogging world will stagnate beyond repair.