I started fem-fATL about a year and a half ago with my good friends @UrbanSocial and @ijustwannab. In recent months, we picked up the talented and cute @atlcutii. Together the four of us have been holding it down on ATL fashion, arts, entertainment, dating, nightlife, careers, you name it. From the beginning, fem-fATL was about fun and friendship. It was an outlet to talk about everything under the sun that we cared to talk about and we found relevant to our home town people: ATL, GA. For me there have always been at least two core principles to fem-fATL and what we stand for:

1) Sorority

I’ve been teased about my sorority metaphor so many times, but it’s true! fem-fATL is certainly open to males, females, and other but our niche is for women like us 18-35, career driven, social, into culture, and outgoing. When I write, I write with my ladies out there in mind. Some of our most loyal readers are other ladies and we really appreciate the love. It’s easy for women to hate on each other, but I’ve found fem-fATL to be a much more positive place. I have felt on so many occasions a sense of support, loyalty, and kindness from our female readers. I feel like us ATL women just click when it comes to what we want and expect from our city, the things to do in this city, and well guys of course. We all have the same pain points as young women living in this sometimes exciting, other times boring, other times annoying, sometimes wonderful city.

When I was younger I was one of those girls who meshed better with guys. I had trouble making friends with girls because I was always so competitive and I saw other girls as some type of threat. Luckily for me, I’ve gotten past all that lameness and have found amazing female friends who no guy could ever come close to. That understanding of sorority or sisterhood is essential to fem-fATL. We are female based blog that deals primarily with female topics of interest. I’ve always wanted our female readers to feel like they are one of our home-girls, that they have a place to contribute on fem-fATL, that they are indeed fem-fATLs and everything a fem-fATL stands for. If you are a female reader out there, we invite you to submit ideas for posts or events.

2) Atlanta Community

When we started fem-fATL we trapped ourselves in a corner with the choice of our name. Our name and logo is a play on Atlanta of course and very difficult to expand into anything more general. Trapped isn’t the right word, because we made Atlanta our focus on purpose. We wanted to offer relevancy to our readers by contextualizing everything we had to say within our city. For me the specifics about people, places, and culture makes the information we provide more relevant, fun, and different from all the other general things out there on fashion, dating, etc. Having to constrain ourselves on Atlanta topics is often a challenging thing, but the constraint forces us to explore the people and places we come across everyday. Since starting fem-fATL the city has become something much more wonderful than I originally thought. I roll my eyes at people who find themselves bored in Atlanta. There is plenty of exciting things to see and do if you keep an open mind and allow yourself to find the city’s hidden gems.

Atlanta is a funny city with funny people and attitudes. A dating column in a magazine like Glamour or Cosmo can’t possibly explain what it’s like trying to date in this environment- their audience is general women where ours is specific to Atlanta Women. I like to think there is value in that specificity and our personal perspectives and experiences.

Our focus on Atlanta means support, support, support for our local businesses and individuals. We try as much as possible to get the good word out there for shops, restaurants, galleries, and venues we love to go to. We’re looking out for you ATLANTA! Finally what’s a city without it’s populous. One of things we find the most fun on fem-fATL is providing space to talk about our city’s movers, shakers, good lookers, next big things, and bachelor’s! Our blog is just as much about other people living in Atlanta as it is about ourselves.

We will always be a female perspective about Atlanta, hence the name fem-fATL.