Wow, I have gotten so much positive feedback about my blog post Funkidivagirl: A 4 Real Housewife! It seems that many women can relate to my story and would like to tell their story as well. I’m excited for funkidivagirl.com to be a platform for women to express themselves! You can read all The 4 Real Housewives’ profiles here.
If you are interested in being profiled as a 4 Real Housewife on Funkidivagirl.com, this post is for you. Here you will find detailed instructions about how to submit your profile. (*By submitting your profile to funkidivagirl.com, you understand that it may be used on this blog and possibly other websites as well.)
Who are housewives? As I said in my previous blog post, they are:
…..smart, educated, fun, interesting, fascinating, creative, savvy, strong, funki women who understand the importance of making family and home life a priority and who work hard to make their lives flexible enough to make this a reality. I believe that this definition is inclusive of a broad spectrum of women: women who don’t work, work at home, own their own businesses, work outside the home part-time, flex-time, or anytime that family life allows. This housewife understands the importance of being available for her husband, children, friends and community but also that she needs to give equal priority to taking care of herself physically, emotionally and doing things that nurture her soul. She’s no Sandra Dee wimp, she’s fierce!
While I want women to talk about their whole selves in the profile (work, interests, etc), I want the focus to be on WHY you consider home life to be important enough and HOW you do it.
I prefer the submission to be a video profile (see those directions below), but if the thought of that just scares the living daylights out of you, it’s okay, you can submit a text profile and photo instead.
“Great!,” you say, “I’m interested! Now what do I talk about?” I’m Glad you asked….
WHAT TO SAY
At the beginning of your profile, give a brief bio. Say your name and where you live. If you have kids, tell their ages (you don’t have to tell their names). If you are married, please say that and tell how long you have been married. You may or may not name him or say what your husband does for a living; it’s up to you. *Be sure to say “I’m a 4 Real Housewife.”
After your bio, talk about whatever you want. Your discussion can be as broad or narrow as you like, general thoughts about “housewifery” or specific to your household and situation.
Please feel free to talk about your hobbies, volunteer work, business, job/career, blog, craftiness, etc., but in the contextual frame as it relates to nurturing yourself, living out your life’s purpose, helping to provide for your family, etc. while still making family and home life a top priority.
Here are some questions to get you thinking:
-Talk about your former life (before kids and/or marriage). And your life now.
-What’s a typical day for you?
-How do you feel about the word “housewife”?
-When you were dreaming long ago, is this how you pictured your life?
-If you don’t work, when did you decide this was the best choice for your family? Do you feel societal pressure to do/be more?
-If you do work (in any capacity), how do you still make family and home a priority?
-What is the best thing about the choices that you have made? What is the worst/hardest?
-What are your plans/dreams for yourself (after the kids leave home)?
These are just suggestions. Everyone’s profile will be different, so don’t worry about anybody else; this is your platform. Just be your fabulous 4 Real Housewife self!
HOW TO SUBMIT A TEXT PROFILE:
Please edit your text for grammar, punctuation and well, that it just makes sense, but understand that I may have to edit it as well.
Type up your profile in a Word document and email it as an attachment to Sherrelle@funkidivagirl.com. Please attach a jpg photo as well of yourself (or the whole family). In the email subject line put “4 Real Housewives Submission” and in the body of the email put your name and email address.
HOW TO SUBMIT A VIDEO PROFILE:
1. Shoot your video and transfer it to your computer. *Try to keep your video on the short side (around 5 minutes). I know, I know…my video was longer than that, but I shot 30 minutes, so it was a real feat to edit it as much as I did. If you don’t have a video camera, but your computer has a webcam, you can film yourself right on YouTube using the “Quick Capture” feature (however, the quality is not the best).
2. If you don’t have a YouTube account already, create one on youtube.com.
3. To upload your video, look for the yellow Upload button and choose the file from your computer.
Follow the instructions on YouTube. Make sure that you name your video something like (Your Name): A 4 Real Housewife so that it will be easy to find. Put “housewives” in the tag section. In the description you can put something like “My life as a 4 Real Housewife.” Use “people & blogs” as the category.
Be sure to allow the following: public viewing, comments, video response, rating and embedding. These are allowed by default, so you don’t have to change anything.
Your video may take some time to upload and process….be patient. Sometimes YouTube freaks out and the video doesn’t upload. Try again.
To find your video again, go to the YouTube home page and look for Account.
In the drop-down menu, click on My Videos and you will be taken to a page like this:
If you see your video in here, then it is done. If you don’t, you will notice a message saying “still processing”. Just wait some more. When your video is done, click Play to watch it on YouTube!
4. Copy the video URL and send it to me in an email to Sherrelle@funkidivagirl.com along with your name and email address.
5. Next join The 4 Real Housewives group on YouTube. The easiest way is to go http://www.youtube.com/group/the4realhousewives. Click on Join This Group and follow the directions to join.
5. Add your video to the group. To do this, click on Add Videos. You will be taken to a screen with a list of videos that you have created. Check the box next to the video that you want to add and click Add to Group.
*You will not see your video there right away as I have to approve it first, but it should appear shortly.
That’s it! You’re done! Wasn’t that easy?
