Caryn Mandabach, who executive produced "The Cosby Show" and "Roseanne" and is one of Oxygen's founding partners (with Laybourne, Winfrey and TV execs Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner), has been quoted as saying that "men watch TV with one hand down their pants and the other on the control," but that "women watch TV with a Krispy Kreme in one hand and a martini in the other and they don't need a remote control." Let's take a breath and ponder that image, shall we? What makes the Oxygen viewer on her chenille sofa pounding down martinis and donuts any more highly "evolved" (to use a favorite Oxygen buzzword) than the guy in the La-Z-Boy watching Comedy Central's "The Man Show" in a happy Bud-and-Doritos stupor?

There's no difference, of course; Oxygen and jokily chauvinistic shows like "The Man Show" and FX's "The X Show" are niche programming at its most nakedly opportunistic. And Laybourne is unquestionably a niche-programming genius, having invented Nickelodeon, the arbiter of all that is cool, hot, funny, gross, smart, dumb and, above all, desirable in the pre-teen world. On Nickelodeon, with rare exception, girls and women are portrayed as smarter than, more resourceful than and generally superior to boys and men. And that "girls rule, boys drool" brand of schoolyard feminism makes its nyah-nyah presence felt all over Oxygen and Oxygen.com. (Actually, the young-skewing "Trackers" and "X-Chromosome" might have made the core of a more viable cable network than Oxygen -- a network for young, post-Nickelodeon women.)

For example, the "People" page of Oxygen.com, which contains press bios of Laybourne and her partners, looks like the high school yearbook blurb you'd write in a daydream about being queen of the world. The bio for "Gerry" tells us that we can "trust her" because "She gets it," and quotes Laybourne's vision for Oxygen: "The center of women's lives isn't expensive cars and designer clothes. The center of their life is managing all their roles." Mandabach's bio flatters her thusly: "Famously wacky. Vivacious. Intense. Fast. Long committed to yoga. A great dresser." As for Werner, we are assured that "he loves women and knows they're smarter than men."

That vanity-plate page crystallized something I'd begun to suspect watching Oxygen's clueless programming. For all its "we celebrate you" crap, Oxygen is a monument to conformity. Laybourne pays lip service to the many roles women play, but Oxygen is really only interested in one of those roles: shopper. Oxygen commiserates, in sisterly clichis, with a phantom woman-consumer, telling her over and over that she's in charge yet stretched thin, strong yet in need of a place to collapse, appreciated yet taken for granted. The network is like a pep rally in reverse, exhorting women to give three cheers if they're miserable. And what do women do when they're miserable? Shop!

In its own way, Oxygen is as separatist as "The Man Show." Can't we all just get along? But more damning than that, it's superfluous. "Who is the most underserved audience?" Laybourne asked rhetorically in a recent New York Times profile. "Women, of course." In what universe? Lately, it seems as if TV is serving no one but women, morning ("The View," "Later Today"), noon (Oprah, the soaps, Rosie O'Donnell) and night ("Providence," "Judging Amy," "Ally McBeal," "Once and Again" and the rest of the flock of chick shows).

In all my hours of Oxygen viewing, I saw almost nothing that surprised or engaged me -- no domestic insight as harsh and true as what's offered every week on "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "The Sopranos" (one woman posted on HBO's "Sopranos" bulletin board that, "It's the only show my husband and I sit down and watch together"), no contemplation of female power as complicated and daring as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," no girl-talk show as witty and audacious as "Sex and the City." I did see plenty of earnest Oprah-style confessionalism, though, and designer spirituality, and teeny-tiny morsels of news you can use -- this is women's culture as advertiser-friendly and passi as "I Am Woman" (which, tellingly, was used as the theme song in Oxygen's TV commercial).

And everywhere, everywhere on Oxygen, I heard the same divisive, battle-of-the-sexes bull they use on "The Man Show," except without the humor. On Oxygen, clichis about men are repeated as if they're undisputed gender fact: Men don't listen, men don't talk, men fear intimacy, men are slobs, yada yada yada. If this is Oxygen's idea of evolution, give me ESPN.

Recent Stories