Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman Blog

Ree Drummond of the Pioneer Woman blog

Ree Drummond is to housewives and homeschooling moms what columnist Erma Bombeck was to our mothers. She might be your role model.  She might be your nemesis.   Some love her $1 million blog, Pioneer Woman.  Others satirize it.

Here are a few of her tips for blogging:

 Be yourself.
Write in your own voice.
Write as if you’re talking to your sister.
Unless you don’t get along with your sister.
Or don’t have a sister.

It's very cute, you have to admit.

I read about her successful blog last winter, probably in The New York Times.  It began as a regular blog in 2006.


Then it got popular.  It became a big business.


She writes about housework, her family, ranching, cooking, and homeschooling. It is now organized into six blogs, and the site is honestly a bit confusing for neophytes.  It is divided into Home, Confessions, Cooking, Photography, Home & Garden, and Tasty Kitchen, and I'm not sure WHAT I want to read.  It is an online diary, with ads, giveaways, and many photographs.  It gets 23.3 million page views per month, according to The New Yorker, and she made approximately $1 million one year.

She reminds me of an American Dovegreyreader, without book chat.  Dovegreyreader has Bookhound (her husband), the Tinker (I don't know why he's called that, either), the Kayaker, Offspringette, and a (now dead) cat named Rocky.  Pioneer Woman has Marlboro Man (her husband), Charlie (a basset hound), multiple animals, Juice Box (her toddler), the Kids, and Mike (her brother). 

Marlboro Man

What struck me about Pioneer Woman when I first visited was the butt shots.  Perhaps I went on a slow day.   Here is Marlboro Man's butt in jeans.  She writes:


"I don’t own a pair (of Wranglers jeans) myself, but I know someone who does. He’s six feet tall, has bulging biceps, and I’ve had four of his children. I’ve considered slipping on a pair of his Wranglers before—whether it be because I was short on durable work jeans or I was going to some costume party dressed as a man—but I’ve always stopped short because I was afraid to see how well they fit me."

She's quirky and funny, fascinating to some, but a little goes a long way with a feminist non-mom like me.  She is an editor's dream, because her cookbook and memoir have been best-sellers.  She now also has a children's book about her dog Charlie!  The blog is a modern woman's Western about a hip mom.  But, much as I like the pictures of cows with new calves, I don't frequent the blog.  She is of a different generation:  chick lit-ish humor.

There is a fascinating, not completely flattering article in The New Yorker about Ree Drummond this week.   The article also alerted me to an extremely cruel and unfunny blog called The Pioneer Woman Sux.  Why anyone would stalk and hate Ree Drummond so viciously is beyond me. At our house, we don't read EITHER Pioneer Woman.