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Pay No Attention to That Woman Behind the Blog
By writing fictionalized, third-person accounts of her adventures, blogger Sarah B. Quiqley entertains readers while preserving her privacy.

by Craig Roush

In 1998, Salon ran a piece by Simon Firth, titled "Baring Your Soul to the Web," which highlighted one of the biggest hurdles confronting authors of the Internet journals known as "weblogs": the sheer terror of offering up the intimate details of one's daily life to a potential audience of millions, exhilarating as the thought of reaching such a readership may be.

Five years later, that paradox still exists, but one blogger, Sarah B. Quigley, may have found a way around it in her blog, Sure Thing, Babs.

What makes Quigley's blog unique is that it is written entirely in the third person, a device that serves as an invisible buffer between Quigley and her readership.

Sarah B. Quigley, not to be confused with her blog's fictional protagonist, Babs.
Photo: David Quigley

Employing a gently cynical sense of humor, Quigley, a 26-year-old ESL teacher at a private language institute in San Francisco, weaves her own experiences into a series of interrelated stories about a fictional protagonist, Babs.

"About 75 percent" of the exploits of Quigley's self-deprecating, sexually charged heroine is true, she says.

How to describe Babs? Best to let her speak for herself: "This log is meant to exalt Babs as a kinky love goddess in four-inch heels," reads an early entry. "It is Babs' approach to life that is so sensational. Babs has almost no shame. She is an unapologetic, pleasure-seeking creature."

Interspersed with Babs' occasionally risqué adventures are idiosyncratic, David Letterman-style "Top 10" lists that shed light on Quigley's endearingly quirky character. Some of these have included "Babs' Extracurricular Activities: A Brief History" (1995-97: "dating masochistic history major from Wisconsin, drinking gin, speaking Russian, eating mac and cheese alone in dorm room, making doilies") and "Biggest Surprises of Babs' Life So Far" (#8: "No longer wants frosting roses on birthday cakes").

Although some pundits, like Firth, see the third-person approach as gimmicky, others argue that it is part of a time-honored tradition of self-reference.

"Norman Mailer has used it quite a bit in his nonfiction," says Seth Feldman, a media critic and professor of film and television at York University in Toronto. "For that matter, [former president Richard] Nixon used to refer to himself as 'The President.'"

Media critic Seth Feldman points to a long line of third-person usage, both in prose and public speaking.
Photo: York University

Referring to oneself in the third person is a way of "putting a barrier between the person and themselves, making it easier to talk about themselves," says Feldman.

Quigley agrees. "Writing these stories, putting a little spin on them, and having a little distance from them makes them enjoyable to remember," she says.

Recently, she has entertained readers with recollections of her first slow dance in middle school and her high school trysts with a foreign exchange student named Sven.

Babs's escapades, recounted with the self-deflating humor that is Quigley's trademark, have won the affections a broad range of readers.

Alexis Massie stopped writing her blog in 1998 because she felt it had become too personal, according to a Salon column.
Photo: Kevin Brusie / kbphoto.com

"Babs is charming," says Alexis Massie, former publisher of a now-defunct online journal and founding editor of the literary forum, AfterDinner. "She's funny, and that's key to developing an audience. She has taken situations that probably happened in some [sense], and amplified them into comedy sketches."

Quigley says she draws inspiration for her fictionalized autobiographical sketches from National Public Radio humorist David Sedaris.

"One of the things I think makes him really funny is his attention to the everyday details of people's lives," she says. "I try to do that through Babs."

She also compares her writing to that of Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries, a series of teen-oriented novels.

"She's so in touch with pop culture as it relates to teenagers," says Quigley.

As it happens, Quigley's site has great appeal to teens, according to her 17-year-old brother and his friends.

Still, Quigley's blog is mostly a personal outlet, she insists.

"When I write, I'm mostly just writing in a way that amuses me," she says. "I don't know that I'm necessarily thinking about other people."

-- Craig Roush is studying journalism and film criticism at NYU.

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