Cathy's World: Lifetime's whole new mag

LOS ANGELES, April 17 (UPI) -- Against all my better instincts and pretensions, I found myself completely won over by the premiere issue of Lifetime TV's new magazine, which hits newsstands across the country Tuesday.

For one thing, it's a pretty clear improvement on other recent new twists to the venerable old housewife genre. Cleanly art-directed and with an unapologetically boosterish tone, Lifetime is Real Simple without the one-hand-clapping Zen absurdity; Rosie without all the lesbianism.

More than that, Lifetime magazine -- a joint publishing venture between Lifetime TV and Hearst -- is such a brilliantly obvious idea you wonder why it didn't happen earlier.

Magazines and newspapers have long provided the lurid but inspirational true-life fodder for the woman-in-jeopardy movies that are Lifetime TV's heart and soul. The headlines presell the show, as they say in the trade; now the cable TV network can presell the magazine.

It's synergy, repurposing, the media circle of life ... all wrapped up in a big, pink, faintly hysterical Lifetime bow.

Or, as editor Sally Koslow puts it in the debut issue's welcome letter, "Inspired by Lifetime TV's gripping movies, the soul of our magazine will be stories that'll make you want to grab the next woman you see and say, 'You have to read this!'"

Warning: Don't try this with with next man you see, unless you want to be considered insane.

Men, in fact, are quite marginalized in this magazine. They're either conveniently away (an awful lot of husbands in Lifetime articles are in the military) or relegated to fantasy roles. A male model in the entertaining feature, for instance, holds a napkin for a woman eating some drippy caramel ice cream as he gazes at her adoringly.

But Lifetime, which has been the top cable channel since 2001, didn't ascend the ratings heights by ignoring the great divide between the sexes.

Men may be attracted to guns, planes, explosions and the Three Stooges, but Lifetime ignores all that and squarely faces its audience's pet interests: makeup, diets, personality quizzes and the nagging feeling that disaster lurks just around the corner.

And Lifetime magazine is stuffed chockablock with all this. The debut May/June issue (the 500,000-circulation magazine goes monthly in September) features country singer Faith Hill on the cover and includes:

A story about a woman whose best friend, a surgeon, discovered and removed her breast cancer and now gives her pal yearly physicals. Which is rivaled in sentimental creepiness only by the story ("My Mom Gave Birth to My Twins") about a woman with no uterus whose 48-year-old mother volunteered to be a surrogate. (Yes, I know: Eeww. But this sort of thing makes time spent in doctors' waiting rooms pass a lot more quickly.)

A profile of "C.S.I." star Marg Helgenberger ("So Nice, It's Criminal!"), who does yoga "to combat the pain of crouching down over all those 'dead' bodies; a first-person account by a recovering shopaholic; an article about how to "Fight Your Fear Factors!"

A piece about a former welfare mom (and former anorexic -- nice twofer!) who now works as a lawyer helping other divorced mothers collect child support from deadbeat dads;

A couple of appealing recipes I plan to try; some neat advice on flower arranging; and a first-person piece about bra shopping by Jessica Seigel, a bosomy free-lance writer I happen to know. Saleswoman: "You think you're a 36D ... but you're a 34DD." (Hey, Jess, va-va-va-voom!)

Now when I'm in the wrong sort of mood -- a mood not receptive to enjoyable wallowing -- this sort of thing can be as tiresome as sitting in front of an endless loop of "The Perils of Pauline." An evening with Lifetime TV is an evening spent in a universe that consists entirely of tabloid-inspired obstacles overcome.

Let it be said that last week's premiere of the Lifetime Original Movie "Homeless to Harvard," about the New York City teen (played by Thora Birch) who did just that, was really quite well-executed in all respects and several notches above typical made-for-TV movie fare.

But it was peppered by relentlessly paranoid commercials for other Lifetime programming. A mother is accused of child abuse on "The Division," a woman tries to find her son's killer on "Final Justice" with Erin Brockovich. And then there's the new Lifetime series "What Should You Do?"

"Your husband is away," the narrator intones forebodingly, over a scene of lurking bad guys. "Your daughter is in her crib. What SHOULD you do? You CAN survive a home invasion!" Oh, good.

Suffice it to say that Lifetime has turned pandering into something of an art form. And I wonder if it's a coincidence that Lifetime chief Carole Black is the only woman CEO I've ever encountered who speaks in that annoying, ditzy uptalk -- you know, where every other statement lifts up like a question?

She's years past the age that most women grow out of this, and I somehow doubt that she was much of an uptalker in her previous corporate job at Procter and Gamble. Possibly it's a special affectation she acquired just for Lifetime, along with girlish statements of sisterhood.

"Well, I have to say," she remarked once at a Lifetime news conference, "I think the women in charge at Oxygen are AWESOME."

She can afford to say that about her smaller, upstart rival, of course. Because Lifetime has long since left Oxygen -- not to mention other cable networks -- in a cloud of (pink, perfumed) ratings dust.

Lifetime is easy to make fun of. But any group that's predominantly female -- from secretaries and nurses to people just looking for something to watch while folding laundry after dinner -- never gets much respect. In the remote wars, however, they will prevail.

Middle-aged women who stay home watching TV (the typical viewer) may not be as sought-after a demographic as young men who rush out to see action films the weekend they open (the typical moviegoer.) But eventually these boys turn into middle-aged men.

Now maybe watching some woman triumph over incestuous rapists/anorexia/deadbeat ex-husbands/various maladies wouldn't be these guys' first choice. But it's hard to do anything about it while falling asleep on the couch.