ABOUT

The ladies' room is traditionally the space of interesting conversations among women; a subversive escape from what might be tedious dinner table talk in the restaurant, a smooth way to duck an insistent admirer at a club, a distraction from the ongoing work of the office. We chose the name because we offer the same kind of discussion and information here: the type of authentic, candid and raw lived experience of the average woman trying to make her own way and create her own future, despite all the "rules" about how we "should" be, what we "should" buy and mostly despite the boundaries we "should" respect. This is our goal. Issue by issue, we move forward in this direction.

In our Live Section we'll have articles with information on how other women have enhanced their lives, either through better skills or innovative leisure activity. A regular feature you can count on comes from our Ontario Biker Columnist who describes her fearless leap onto the driver's seat of a motorcycle at an age when many women are looking for a good calcium supplement. Another feature explores the delicate balancing act involved in the gently-down-the-stream mix of a beautiful British Columbia lake, a canoe and a family with two preschoolers. Other articles will focus on the cross-cultural dilemmas inherent in immigrating to North America.

The Eat, Drink Section will have suggestions for healthy, but alternative eating/drinking beyond the basics of the Canada Food Guide. While the Parent Columns also presents articles from those on the front lines involved in the everyday art and science of bringing up their offspring.

Here's where we're going philosophically. Like American journalist Gay Talese, we value everyday events and moments woven together into the fabric of life (in our case, we focus specifically on the lives of women) at this moment in time in a particular geographical location. We recognize the intersections between gender, age, socio-economic achievement, race and ethnicity. We strive to offer portraits of others and ourselves doing what we do in an ongoing attempt to make meaning, define our identities and understand our experience. By converting our experiences into hypertext, we seek to present aspects of our experience to a global village. We celebrate our similarities and our differences with others walking down the global village avenues. We follow the age-old principle: "hurt no one and do what you will," and then write about it. We update ladies-room.net regularly, weekly for the most part.

Go ahead. Take a break in the ladies room. This is the kind of escape you've been wanting.