Hot mamas

Once, not so terribly long ago, a female TV character of, ahem, a certain age tended to look like Brandon and Brenda's mom on "Beverly Hills 90210": congenial, bland, and professionally dowdy. She was not wearing cha-cha halter tops or taking dating advice from her kids, and she most certainly was not sleeping with the gardener.

Today, she might be doing any number of such things, or solving forensic mysteries in fashionable pants, or having booty calls -- yes, that's what she calls them -- with her daughter's ex-boyfriend. At any rate, she is coifed and coutured and refuses to let herself go. And this season, she seems to be everywhere.

The latest symbol of the trend is ABC's "Desperate Housewives," a ratings hit that features hot TV mamas from the ranks of highbrow and lowbrow fare. It joins a string of recent shows that star women old enough to recall the Reagan years. "Sex and the City" was gleeful proof of an audience for strong, sexy women. The "CSI" franchise has filled female roles not with young, post-"Baywatch," Angie Harmon types, but with older, Lifetime-graduate babes a la Marg Helgenberger and Melina Kanakaredes. Meanwhile, Fox's "The O.C.," first billed as another teen soap, devotes just as much screen time to its grown-up characters. In one of last season's most delicious moments, Kelly Rowan's TV husband uttered the six words no
teenage son wants to hear: "Face it, your mom's a hottie." Yes! Women can still be hot, even if they've passed the 18-34 demographic. Not just in terms of sex appeal, either. Their TV ascendancy springs from money, demographics, and the realization that teenagers might not be advertisers' holy grail after all.

But there is peril in marketing sexy women to the mainstream. Five companies recently pulled advertising from "Desperate Housewives" after a conservative group complained that the show doesn't promote traditional family values. ABC seems unfazed; its spokespeople say there are ample advertisers lined up to replace the defectors. And marketers say the new women-centered shows remain an easy sell, as companies aim at an untapped female market.

It's a matter of sheer economic power, says Kathleen Seiders, a marketing professor at Boston College. As women increasingly earn professional degrees and rise in the workplace, their spending ability grows, and so does their influence over household purchases. Moms still tend to take charge of the grocery shopping, but they've also taken a larger hand in choosing a family car. They're also developing a taste for luxury. The spa weekend has become the female answer to the male golf getaway.

Retailers have taken notice. The Gap recently announced that it will launch a new clothing chain geared at 35-and-older women. Gymboree, the place for tiny tots, recently opened a chain called Janeville, aimed at outfitting their moms.

The industry is shifting dramatically, says Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at the NPD group, a market research firm based in Port Washington, New York.

"For a long period of time, the retailers were really focused on the youth of America," he says. "They were the golden ticket."

So pop culture followed: TV got clogged with "Dawson's Creek," "Roswell," and "Felicity," and stores shifted youthward, churning out higher midriffs and lower waistlines. Now, Cohen says, the teen market is oversaturated and spread thin. But 30- and 40-something women have pent-up demand, business is tapping in, and TV, once again, is catching up.

The ads on "Desperate Housewives," so far, comprise a curious mix of old- and new-model mom fare. There is a bevy of products aimed at the fountain of youth: pore cleansers, hair dyes, teeth whiteners, and a weight-loss drug called Xenadrine, whose commercial celebrates the housewife as hot ticket. Suffice it to say that the punch line is, "Dude. That's my mom."

There are the requisite pitches for vacuum cleaners, air fresheners, and the family car as vessel for excitement. "Mom has changed. Shouldn't the minivan?" was the text of one Nissan ad last week.

But some of the more domesticated products will be seen no longer. Tyson, Lowe's, Kellogg, and two frozen-meal companies have pulled their ads from future episodes, in response to pressure from the conservative American Family Association. The group has apparently discovered -- shock! -- that a show called "Desperate Housewives" doesn't look like the fare on family channels.

That's the risk of becoming an instant hit, as "Ally McBeal" can testify. Suddenly, "Desperate Housewives" isn't just a TV show but a cultural phenomenon, its characters seen as emblems of the state of modern womanhood. And, it turns out, it isn't just conservatives who have complaints. Feminist critics, too, are taking aim.

" `Desperate Housewives' features every bad stereotype that I can think of about women," says Martha Lauzen, a communications professor at San Diego State University who compiles an annual study of women's employment in the TV industry. "It pits women against women, competing for what else? Men. It shows women as petty, self-centered, scheming."

Granted, these "Desperate" women are particularly bad role models. Teri Hatcher, formerly of "Lois & Clark," was abandoned by her husband; Marcia Cross, veteran of the ultra-campy "Melrose Place," is driving hers away; and Felicity Huffman, who played a hard-driving producer on "Sports Night," traded a fine career for a stay-at-home life she appears to despise. And don't forget Nicolette Sheridan, the "Knots Landing" veteran, as the neighborhood tart. Who, of course, is a blonde.

But who said we were supposed to take these ladies seriously? "Desperate Housewives" is meant to be parody, a sendup of suburban mores, not a celebration of them. (The camp, at its best, is in the small details: Huffman in huge curlers and green facial mud mask, and the fact that her three sons are named Parker, Porter, and Preston.)

For too many people, though, the joke seems lost. When Oprah Winfrey invited the "Desperate Housewives" cast to preen before her own audience of stay-at-home moms last week, she declared the show a mirror on Americans' real-life "quiet desperation." She harped on how realistic the characters were and trotted out examples of real-life women who share the same issues: a perfectionist who's driving her family nuts, a housewife who had an affair because she's unfulfilled. "So the show is like therapy for you?" Oprah said eagerly to one of them.

Only in the way every soap opera is -- by serving up the same schadenfreude that "Dynasty" offered in those Reagan days, when a different generation of older women played miserable and sexy on TV. "Dynasty" made us feel better about not being rich; "Housewives" tells us that a more-accessible dream can be depressing, too. Even if you look as good as Hatcher -- who did a stripping-as-exercise routine on "Oprah," for heaven's sake -- you can still be sad, jilted, and awkward.

Desperate is a bit of a stretch. Then again, this is only TV.