THE WOMAN IN THEM

By BRUCE HANDY

ASKED TO DEFINE THE IDEALIZED WOMAN WHO HAS COME TO BE known as the Cosmo Girl, editor in chief Helen Gurley Brown once replied, "She has always been sexy, slender and bosomy." The latter adjective--so evocative of old-fashioned feminine allure, of torpedo bras and Pursettes, of Helen Gurley Brown herself (though she is actually wafer thin)--describes what is probably the Cosmo Girl's most famous attribute. "A beautiful bosom is a beautiful bosom," Brown elaborated. "If you don't have one, you look on with awe and envy."

That may have been true of the man who used to be America's premiere daytime talk-show host. Like Brown, he works hard to identify with his primarily female audience--too hard, perhaps, for he once told an interviewer, while musing on the human condition, "Life beats us up so much. We worry if our breasts are too small, or too big..." Ickily presumptuous? Aggressively empathetic? What could be more redolent of Phil Donahue, who along with Alan Alda was one of the twin pillars of '70s-style sensitive guydom?

Sexuality sure won't be the same without Brown and Donahue, who both announced last week that they will no longer be dealing quite so publicly with things gendered. Brown, who has been the editor of Cosmopolitan since 1965, when she transformed it into the journal of libido empowerment and big hair we know today, will step down after an 18-month transition. Donahue's producers revealed that his TV show, a victim of poor ratings, will soon leave the air. He will still do occasional specials, the TV equivalent of getting kicked upstairs.

Brown and Donahue both had strong visions of what a woman or a man should be, and profited handsomely therefrom. She concocted an instantly successful editorial voice that encouraged her single readers to pursue sex as freely and doggedly as men, at the same time instructing them in the more traditional, and more consuming, art of husband trapping. I made the mistake of thinking the Cosmo Girl, like the Man Who Reads Playboy, was something of an anachronism--until I saw Waiting to Exhale and its cast of supposedly independent women defined by their ability to hook, or not hook, a man. The audience loved it. Brown's vision will endure.

Donahue's is more problematic. Though he is credited with pioneering talk-show subjects on the order of mother-daughter stripper teams, the real reason for his success was his fierce ability to empathize with women viewers. Speaking of his trademark glasses, he once told his mostly female audience, "I just wear them to look like a gynecologist!"--as if he were an expert on the subject, and as if women would find such an impersonation appealing. Apparently they did. Nevertheless, Donahue's brand of me-too feminism has fallen out of favor, though he will leave behind an important legacy in Washington. Not only did Bill Clinton use Donahue's show to reach voters in 1992; with his "I feel your pain" persona, he has even lifted Donahue's shtick. And now, thanks to the tabloids, we can finally imagine what happens when the Donahue New Man meets the Cosmo Girl. Just ask Gennifer Flowers or Paula Jones.