Women all over the web

There are some corners of the web inhabited just by women and that’s just as it should be. We did always did like gathering at the well for a chat and the web is just one big well.
One of the first off the mark was www.handbag.com, launched back in 1999 to provide a “glossy, stylish take on matters that women love, like fashion, beauty, celebrity, gossip, going out and staying in”. Then it was a pioneer. Now it’s just part of the Hearst magazine empire. Big, busy and booming, it scores 22 million “unique page views” per month.
The world’s number one women’s site is www.ivillage.com , launched in 1995 and now NBC-owned. On the day I last looked it was offering advice on how to manage sex when on “vaycay” (vacation) with the kids; and what your ice-cream preference says about your personality. A yen for vanilla, it seems, means you’re more of a risk- taker than those who like chocolate or strawberry. Oh sure.
Big sites like that can be so take-it-or-leave-it. So is there something more local, more ‘niche’, more relevant?
You bet. Try www.wisanow.co.nz, set up by Aucklanders Geraldine Meo and Raewyn Hamilton (pictured). They’re both in real estate but Wisanow is their outside-of-work baby, set up because they believe strongly that baby-boomer women can have a struggle as they enter what some call “second adulthood”. Once the mid-life stage opens up, many are searching for fresh fields, renewed purpose and meaningful goals. Meo and Hamilton are aiming for a “warm, honest and empathetic forum”.
Packed full of food, travel, health, shopping and culture pages (around 1000 at last count), it’s receiving as much interest from overseas as at home. “They tell us they like that our discussion forums are real and not just about botox and celebrities,” says Hamilton. “And we’re finding that the topics women care about here are the same all over the world.”
Another useful local site: www.womenz.co.nz, founded by Katrina Winn as a bid to “add value to women’s lives”. It also contains good, relevant material.
But it’s not easy maintaining such sites. They come and go. But check out www.heartless-bitches.com, which has been up since 1996 and is thus positively venerable. I think it’s US-based but on the web it’s hard to tell. Not quite as hard-arse as it sounds, it’s leavened with considerable humour. And “bitch” stands for Being In Total Control, Honey. As a life goal that’s hard to argue with.
*This piece is part of my Webmistress page in Next magazine, Oct issue. The mag's not online but you can 'like' it on Facebook page. Look for Next Magazine NZ

The return of the Jed

How very weird it is that one overwrought and half-baked pastor from a Florida church that has 50 in its congregation (down by half from where it was a few days ago) can nab headlines around the world with his intention to burn copies of the Koran as his very own ridiculous and inflammatory way to mark 9/11. Outraged protests from a host of world leaders is not enough to stay the hand of Pastor Jones, who is presumably revelling in the attention. Ah well, what can you expect from someone who is the spitting image of The Beverly Hillbillies' Jed Clampett? All he needs is the hat. And probably the gun.
If you're too young to remember Jed be advised that the scriptwriters of this classic '60s comedy gave him some very good lines, including this put-down of his dim-witted son, Jethro: "If brains was lard, that boy wouldn't have enough to grease a skillet." Seems like a good retort for Mr Jones.

The power of stories told by dads

As Father’s Day has rolled round this year I’ve thought not so much of my own father but of my father-in–law, Richie, because I’ve also been thinking lots about the importance of family stories.
Richie told us a story the night after his wife Hilda’s funeral. It’s interesting how funerals bring out tales of days gone by. A key gets turned in our hearts at such times, and the door opens and out flow words that need saying.
He talked about the hard times in his early life and of a morning when he was just a small boy, living on the family dairy farm on the slopes of Mt Ngongotaha. It was a dark, freezing morning, early 1920s. Richie’s dad was out with the cows, as usual, when his mother came into the room he shared with his brother. They were still in bed.
“She looked so odd,” Richie remembered when he was himself an old man. “She came in and said, ‘I’ve just come to say goodbye, boys’. And then she turned and walked out of the house.’
Little Richie knew something was very wrong. He got up and raced out to the milking shed. ‘Dad, Dad!’ he cried. ‘Mum’s gone.’
A lifetime later, he could still remember the stricken expression on his father’s face as he ran out of the shed and down the frosty hill after his wife and brought her home again.
When I heard that story I felt for her. I wondered if, desperate to escape the hard-scrabble farming life, she just had to get away. But then, where would she have gone? Was she really going to leave her boys behind? How would she have made it on her own? Divorce was a great scandal then and social welfare non-existent.
Did she simply go back with a leaden heart and get on with things, because there was just no other option? Whatever, she stayed, and between them they raised a fine family.
You start to feel the impact of stories like that in midlife, because it’s only then that we’ve been through enough of our own dramas to know that life rarely turns out as we expect it to.
Of course even though we think we’re just ordinary, all our lives are rich with drama. But most of us cover up our hot-point moments because we think they’re too private, too painful or maybe too embarrassing to share. And yet it’s so vital for us to reveal them, not just because they can help other people cope with trouble, but because unloading our old hurts can be good for us too, leaving us feeling lighter and stronger.
“I used to think I’d be able to change the world,” one friend told me with rueful smile. “Then I realised I couldn’t do that. Then I thought you could change yourself, and came to see that wasn’t possible either. The good thing about getting older is that you finally begin to figure who you are in the big picture of things. I think now that what life’s all about is just being the hero or heroine of your own story – and sharing it with other people.’
Richie’s gone now too, but thanks, Poppa, for sharing. And thanks to all dads everywhere who’ve sat down with their families sometime and told them a true-life story, straight from the heart. Not enough blokes do that. And they’re stories we need to hear.