Beyond “Bridezilla,”with a vet at the helm: Women’s media network WeTV, known until now for reality shows like “Bridezilla” (above),  has just hired Lifetime/USA Networks exec Laurette Hayden to oversee a new line of original movies. Hayden, 54, comes with a thorough Hollywood pedigree, and she’s used to working on ‘women’s projects,’ having cut her teeth producing on Joyce Chopra’s 1996 My Very Best Friend.”

Now, Hayden will be tasked with turning WeTV into competition for her former employers:

Look out, Lifetime, WEtv is getting into the longform game. The Rainbow Media-owned women’s network plans to start making
original movies, with an eye toward releasing the first title late next
year…..

“We should be out there in the game making films for television,” said Steve Cheskin, senior vp programming at WE.

Top 10 cable network Lifetime tends to dominate this space,
however, and its spinoff Lifetime Movie Network has grown by leaps
and bounds.  “Lifetime does what they do, and we do what we do,” Cheskin said.
“We’re going to do movies that fit our brand.”

Part of that branding is finding movies that can be cross-promoted
with the network’s reality fare. A well-promoted original movie
that involves a wedding, for example, could help bring new viewers
to “Platinum Weddings” or “Wedding Central.”

WVFC trusts that Hayden, as a prominent advocate for children with epilepsy and who shepherded the 2001 docudramas “Ask Me About My Children” and “Within These Walls,”  will bring a diverse set of interests to the job.

Meanwhile, in honor of her mother Eva Marie Saint, we thought we’d take the only excuse WVFC will ever have to offer a clip from On the Waterfront:

Never too late to ask the questions: A new handbook offered by the New Zealand Department of Family Planning equips women over 40 some smarter ways to dive into the dating pool:

New Zealand women dipping their toes in the dating game at 40 or older have a new handbook.

But it’s not just a guide on how to tell whether the lawnmower man is Mr Right, Mr Right for Right Now, or someone to avoid altogether. Rather, it’s a handbook on sexual health, safe-sex practices and dating education, for a generation of women who, in large part, missed such an education while growing up.

The state-funded [email protected] booklet was produced to educate heterosexual women who found themselves back in the dating game post 40, Family Planning chief executive Jackie Edmond said. Those women might never have imagined the possibility of their long-term relationship ending, and could be faced with considerable adjustments to accepting new possibilities, she said.

“This is compounded by changes in society – more ways of meeting someone, increased risks of sexually transmissible infections. We know, too, that many people in the over-40 age group aren’t good at taking care of themselves. They’ve simply not had the safer sex messages that young people have been getting.”….

Some sample of the book’s “dating advice,”  useful no matter how often you’ve told it to yourself:

* Get a sexual health warrant of fitness, from your GP or Family Planning clinic.

* Talk about safer sex. It may be better to put off sex until you
have built up intimacy and trust in the relationship, then the subject
will be easier to discuss.

Keep a clear idea in your head about what you want. Think about
these questions: Does it fit with my life plan? Does this relationship
match my values and belief system? Am I being respected? What does my
gut instinct tell me?

Super News Brief: If you’ve little patience for
all the latest news about ways to keep your mental faculties intact as
we age, Allison Van Dusen’s new summary on Forbes.com hits most of the high points, from relationship status to statins and fatty acids. Make sure to click on the  accompanying slide show, which included some caveats even Newsmix had missed (tofu?).

When exercising for health, keep it real: Our expectations, at least. A new University of Michigan study showed
that if midlife women decide to exercise to lose weight, they tend not
to keep it up, but do if they know their goal is to prevent heart
disease:

When the goal is to improve well-being and reduce
stress–not necessarily to lose weight or prevent an illness—they tend
to stick to their routines better, the study says.

“These findings suggest that the typical way that most women
approach exercising may be undermining their participation in it,” said
Michelle Segar, a women’s motivation and behavior researcher at the
Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

The longitudinal study sampled healthy women who were between 40 and
60 years old and worked full time. Researchers collected data on women
living in the Midwest at three intervals, including one-month and
one-year periods. The subjects answered questions about how much they
exercised, what their exercise goals were, and how committed they were
to achieving these goals.

Segar says the findings challenge how society thinks about exercise.

“It’s counterintuitive,” she said. “Instead of prescribing exercise
to prevent disease, healthcare providers who emphasize physical
activity as a means to enhance women’s quality of life might better
facilitate long-term participation among healthy women, making disease
prevention more likely.”

By Chris Lombardi