Welcome to the fray the premiere issue of Total 180!, a magazine for working women who have chosen to stay at home full-time, with a tag line that reads “From briefcase to diaper bag…”

Total 180! was founded by three California women who left their careers — one in publishing, one in real estate marketing, and one in dentistry — to raise kids, only to find that there was a dearth of magazines addressing their specific situation. They threw their money together to create the Girlfriend Media Group, which publishes Total 180! The initial subscription base is 25,000, and they work for a few flexible hours a day. Their aim is to publish six times a year.

I should confess that I picked up Total 180! expecting to read a pious and self-congratulatory ode to the virtues of child rearing. What I found was perhaps more disquieting.

Whatever studies tell us about whether privileged women are or aren’t opting out, this magazine, produced by women who have, suggests that some stay-at-home moms are in a dark, dark place. As a woman who is neither married nor a mother, but who someday hopes to have children with a partner, I was left petrified by Total 180! and its vivid depiction of the inequities of domestic life that I — apparently naively — had assumed were a thing of the past in a post-feminist world.

An editor’s letter by Erika Kotite kicks off by describing pizza joints where groups of “stay-at-home moms ‘let out’ by their husbands” huddle “for a once-weekly session of lamenting, venting, laughing and girding for the next week of chaos.” Let out? Yikes.

There’s also a message from Total 180! founders Debbie Klett, Kirstie Zamboanga and Andrea Bandle, who write, “We hear what you’re screaming because we’re screaming it, too!” Can you hear them, Clarice?

A contributor’s note explains that writer Kelly Pollard used to be an after-school-program teacher until she elected “the more rewarding, exasperating, and challenging job of CHO [Chief Household Officer].” A Total 180! ad tells readers that “being an at-home mom is the absolute hardest and most important job there is…” Is it? Is it harder than being a Middle East peace negotiator or a janitor at a sports stadium? Is it more important than being an environmental preservationist or a bus driver? It’s possible to rightly assert that stay-at-home mothers work hard at an extremely important job without testing the limits of credulity or coming off as defensive or judgmental. But maybe the Total 180! people are just desperate for a ray of positivity in what sounds like their hellish daily lives.

The first item in a section about goods “that no stay-at-home mom should do without” is a big bottle of Rodney Strong Chardonnay. A photograph illustrating a piece called “Martha Doesn’t Live Here” depicts a crazy-eyed woman wielding a turkey-carving knife. The “Sex Scorecard” feature is about women who tally up their husbands’ daily good deeds and sins and allow his score to determine whether “he is — or ISN’T — ‘getting any.’” What about whether she is or isn’t getting any?

One chart called “Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda” compares, “just for fun,” what CHOs are obligated to do during the holidays vs. what they would actually like to do. Among the required tasks? “Do all the shopping for my entire family and my husband’s relatives,” “Buy a new dress for my husband’s company party,” “Cook endless batches of cookies” and “Put the decorations away and clean the house on New Year’s Day.” Among the things that CHOs would like to do are “Sit in front of a cozy fire drinking wine,” “Buy a whole new winter wardrobe” and “Send my husband to the bakery.” Another table listing “20 ways to amuse yourself on a bad day” includes suggestions like making “pancakes in the shape of those really nice Jimmy Choos you used to wear before you had kids,” and affixing “a smiley face sticker to your forehead, because frankly, it’s the only smile that’s been on your face all day.”

Isn’t the new “staying at home” about empowerment of sorts? Isn’t it supposed to be about exercising choices made possible by feminism? Why are these women doing all the baking and cleaning and schlepping to husbands’ office parties? In a feature called “Gettin’ CHOey,” the Total 180! ladies write that “We needed to validate, support and reassure one another. Lord knows our husbands can’t do that for us, and we shouldn’t expect them to — that’s what girlfriends are for.” Why is there no expectation of validation, support or reassurance from the husbands whose dinners they’re cooking? Did they all marry the Great Santini?

Reading Total 180! made me want to introduce the CHOs to an incisive little volume titled “The Feminine Mystique.” In it, they would find a description, in Paragraph 1, of a suburban wife who, as she “made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night … [was] afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — ‘Is this all?’”

I called Total 180! co-founder Debbie Klett to ask her directly about these questions. Klett, 38, spent seven years in sales at International Data Group before deciding to stay at home full-time more than two years ago. She lives in Rocklin, Calif., with her husband (who wrote the male perspective on the “Sex Scorecard” in which he wondered “why [wives] can’t remember that we’re giving ‘it’ to you too?”] and 3-and-a-half-year-old twin daughters.

Do you find a contradiction in publishing a magazine about stay-at-home mothers when you yourself have gone back to work?

We feel that we’re reinventing ourselves. We’re still putting our families first. And if I’m on the phone for business and my kids need me then I can say, “I’ve got to call you back.” It’s not really opting back into the workforce, it’s reinventing a way to stay involved and hoping society will play along. Imagine if companies put families first and tried to work with women! Imagine if they were better about hours and on-site day care and job sharing and flexible shifts.

That would be great. But that’s different from full-time motherhood, which is what the magazine is about, right?

Well, by no means do we want to frown upon moms that need to work. We are not telling working moms you need to stay home; we do not want to do that at all. I have a friend who needs to work. If she were home with her kids all day she wouldn’t be able to mentally take it; everybody’s different. But there is a trend in society; women in their 30s have been able to have the success of having a career, and then they have their children and they say what I want to do is be there for all those firsts and be here for my children.

The New York Times recently interviewed women at elite colleges who said they planned to stay home to raise their kids. I think that’s great. I am biased, of course, but I think that if you focus on your family and you’re there for your children and they’re not coming home to an empty house then that is going to create a positive wave of change across society.

What about women who need to work not for psychological reasons but for financial ones? Does privilege play a part in staying at home?

Absolutely. I can say personally that we as a family made personal sacrifices to enable me to stay home: We moved to a community where we were able to afford a home and a lifestyle that could be supported by one income. That’s one of the reasons we put the feature about the 10 best cities [in which to be a CHO] in the issue, because we realize that sometimes families have to move for a woman, or a man, to be able to stay home.

Right. But a huge number of families can’t even afford to own a house, much less move. I’m talking about poorer women for whom staying at home is simply not an option.

Oh, absolutely. When you get into different economic levels of society there is no option to make a choice and my heart goes out to those women, because maybe they do want to be staying home and they just can’t.

What kind of positive wave of change were you referring to above?

Well, I don’t know how to say it without slamming anybody, but I do believe if you put your family first and are there for your children and make them feel loved and supported, they’re not going to go out looking for love and support in places that might not be good for them. If society, including corporate America, put family first, imagine what kinds of positive changes would happen across all levels.

The main reason why kids get involved in gangs is because they need to feel accepted in a circle of people who understand who they are. If your kids feel they are loved and accepted at home and they have a strong home base, even if Mommy and Daddy work, they’re going to be more self-confident individuals who may not need to feel like they have to go somewhere else to feel accepted. But by no means do I want to slam anyone who has to work. This is a very rocky ridge to walk.

Because people are inevitably defensive about the choices that they have made?

Oh yeah. You know we have a story in the first issue called “I’m Sooo Pissed…!” [in which a CHO responds to the question "What do you do all day?"]. When women leave the workforce, you feel like you’ve lost your identity. So when people ask what you do and you say, “I stay at home with my kids,” you say, “I used to be in the publishing world,” so that you can have something important you used to do. We are trying to start a wave of change so that people understand that being a mother is one of the most important jobs in the world. The rewards are unmeasurable.

Well, it’s good to hear you talk about the rewards, because to be honest, as someone who hasn’t had kids yet, your magazine scared me to death. When I opened it I assumed it would be a complete celebration of domestic life, but it actually made it sound pretty bad.

Well, that’s good for us to hear for feedback. What did you think was scary?

Well, when you wrote about being “let out” once a week by your husbands, it made it sound like you were caged.

When you are a mom you have what I call a hypothetical pager, and your pager is on 24/7; you never get to turn it off. Getting “let out” means that your husband has said, “Go out for the night, I’ll take care of things,” and you are able to completely release yourself from responsibility.

You know reality TV? Well this is a reality magazine. We’ve received maybe one comment that our features were a bit long. That’s the only comment that was in any way negative. The reality of staying home is sometimes “What the heck am I doing? I want to pull every hair out of my head!” and the next minute your child comes up and gives you a hug and tells you they love you and it’s the best thing. But we don’t want to sugarcoat things and say everything is a celebration.

I was also alarmed by the “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda” chart because it seemed like moms were depriving themselves of so much. I wanted to scream, “Buy something for yourself! Let your husband get his own dinner!” Is it really that bad?

Oh no, it’s just that we always joke around; we say, “When I turn 40, I’m going to be able to talk about what I want to do!” “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda” is a humorous thing, because we all want to go on that trip to take the kids to cut down the Christmas tree, right? But then you’re getting the kids in the car and cutting it down and it’s cold and you’re thinking “Oh my gosh, let me just buy a fake tree and be done!” It’s designed to be funny.

Yes, but I agree — buy a fake tree!

I hope you got this sentiment, that we are all very grateful at the end of the day. Going from the workforce to staying home is a transition and a challenge but it is totally worth it. The moments with your kids are priceless and when you put your head on your pillow every night you know you are there for your kids and you know you’re doing the right thing. It just feels right.

Are you conscious that statements like that — about how you know you’re doing the right thing — will make many working mothers feel angry and guilty?

I am totally conscious of that and that is a personal statement based on my own choice. Everyone has to do what they feel is right for themselves. I know by putting my family first I’m doing the right thing for me, for my children and my family unit. But everyone has to do what they feel is right. If a mom is going to stay home and not be happy about it and be in a bad mood all day because she resents it, then that’s not going to be good for the family unit.

What about the Sex Scorecard article, where sex is something women withhold from their husbands. Don’t moms like sex too?

I live on a street [on which] all of the houses … are stay-at-home moms and we sit and talk about the idea of the Sex Scorecard, like, “Man, why can I not get in the mood? I am always tired, and he ticked me off doing this.” But if you get to the end of the Sex Scorecard you’ll see that it says that by withholding sex you’re punishing yourself too and mothers need to make it more of a priority. It may get better as kids get older, but in that initial stage with bottles and laundry and getting used to the fact that you have a baby, unfortunately it’s what happens.

But wouldn’t all the bottles and laundry also impact husbands’ libidos? Do they lose the drive?

Oh, no. What happens is that the wife’s attention is mostly on the kids, but the husband hasn’t changed, hasn’t gone through any type of hormonal things and he’s still got needs and for him it’s like, “Hey, what’s going on?” Hopefully they are understanding about it but I don’t think that their [sex drive] is affected anywhere near the way the woman’s is.

But aren’t modern men supposed to be sharing in the experience of parenthood? It doesn’t make sense to me that a man’s life and habits wouldn’t be changed at all by becoming a father.

Ha, well you know one of the feature stories for the next issue is called “My Husband Is a Single Man Who Happens to Have a Family.” I mean, I’m sure you found from reading the magazine that we’re trying to be humorous. I don’t know how to put it, but men, as we know, maybe even biologically are able to focus on one thing at a time. Women juggle. The fact that I stay home and watch my kids gives my husband the freedom to not wear that pager because he knows I’ve got it covered. When we’re both home we share. But we had to have that discussion many times, about having shared duty. It’s the same thing women talk about all the time, that their husband doesn’t clean the house or doesn’t do this or that. A man will step over the bag of garbage to get to the beer in the fridge, and a woman will pick up the bag of garbage as soon as she walks into the kitchen.

But 40 years after feminism, aren’t those patterns that should have changed? Don’t you think that men can be better than that?

I really, really hope so. I do have a neighbor who, when her husband comes home from work, he takes care of the kids. They totally share everything. I do think it’s something that can change, but there has to be conscious effort from both sides to make it work.

What do you think about feminism, which tried to free women from some of these binds by fighting for them to have an equal place in the workplace and at home?

I think that what we’re talking about is a reworking of feminism in the sense that we are opting to stay home and at the same time we are yelling from the treetops that this should not be something that makes us any less of a person in society. That’s the part that upsets us the most. Have you ever read that book “The Mists of Avalon” [Marion Zimmer Bradley's gyno-centric reimagining of Arthurian legend]?

Yes, a long time ago.

Well, at some point the women were the powerful ones; we had all the power and the glory. Then it shifted and it was the men on top. And feminism tried to move us forward again, to get the same pay and the same promotions, and that’s great and all, but sometimes … feminism says, “OK, get that job,” and “You can do just as good as the men,” so we think, “OK, I’ve got to get that job and do just as good as the men but when I come home I’ve also got to be on duty.” And doing it all is just not always possible.

There is a maternal instinct and I believe it is a biological thing. If you’re going to try to work 60 hours a week and be a mother, you cannot do it all equally well. You have to make the choice as to what you want and what your priority is. It’s a reworking of feminism because if stay-at-home moms had respect like they do in the workplace it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. That’s why we came up with the title CHO for chief household officer. Because when you lose your paycheck and lose your title, somehow you lose respect. And we are trying to explain why that should not be the case. When you tell people you’re staying home, they should say “Congratulations! What a great choice!”

But have people who answer that they work made a bad choice?

No, but workplaces should have on-site day care and let you work flexible hours. Can you imagine? We need this reinvention. Look what’s happened by not putting the family first.

What’s happened?

It seems like there’s a lot more weird stuff going on in society than there used to be.

Are you blaming the weird stuff on the feminist movement?

No, not really. But you’ve got a lot of moms who tried to have it all and you’re seeing the results of that in that children were not getting as much dedicated attention as they were before when you had June Cleavers. I heard on TV recently that kids in grade school were giving oral sex to people for a dollar. I don’t know if that went on in the 1950s but I sure didn’t hear about it. I wasn’t around in the ’50s but you know what I mean. Why is that happening now?

It sounds like you’re idealizing the 1950s, which is pretty controversial. The 1950s was a stifling decade for women. Do you want to go back to the ’50s?

No, I think that somewhere between the 1950s and now, that’s the happy medium we’re trying to get to now. If we could have the liberation but still put family first.

What would be interesting is to see if you took finances completely out of the picture what women’s choice would be. Is the need for dual incomes the main reason they’re not staying home? Or are they not staying home because they’d rather work?

Well, why did you choose to start this magazine?

We realized that there was no magazine that spoke to women in the voice that we as professional women turned stay-at-home moms wanted to read. Most other magazines are very advice- and tip-driven: trim down your abs, et cetera. Just reading the cover you [get the message that you're] not good enough the way you are. When you go out with your girlfriend, she tells you, “Oh, you’re going through this difficult time, I understand.” That’s the voice we wanted to capture.

So you didn’t choose to found the magazine for financial reasons, but because you were passionate about it.

Absolutely. And that’s part of our thinking. That if women decided to be at home, they might get involved in [projects they're passionate about]. I am very, very thankful my husband goes out and gets his paycheck and keeps the house afloat. I am very, very thankful that I have the opportunity to do something I really care about. It’s a way to keep the adult side of yourself as passionate and alive as the side of you that’s playing Barbies. You’re having the best of both worlds and your brain is not turning to mush.

I remember my husband getting home one night and suggesting we get pizza. And I took down the phone book and started counting the places we could order from: “One, two, three, four, five …” and he said, “You don’t have to count like that to me.” So you don’t want to stay like that all the time, because, yeah, you would go crazy.

Is there one moment when you remember knowing for sure that you did the right thing by staying home?

When one of my daughters was starting to walk, I was right there and I didn’t have to hear about it from a day-care person. It was like, “Here it is, the first time, and I’m sitting right here and I’m never going to forget this.” Stay-at-home moms cry on a regular basis, because we are filled with joy and frustration. And when you become a stay-at-home mom, you really join a community of women.

It’s not scary, really.

Today, Obama doubled down on his disregard for the concerns of these groups, claiming that while Sebelius made her decision without his counsel, he agreed with it. Obama pooh-poohed the findings of the FDA, which had concluded that Plan B pills posed no medical hazard and supported Sebelius’ official argument, citing a lack of confidence that “a 10-year-old or 11-year-old going to a drugstore would be able to, alongside bubble gum or batteries, be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly can have an adverse effect.” The logic expressed today by the president, and yesterday by Sebelius, is ludicrous: Medicines like Tylenol – which have been proven to have adverse effects in high doses – are available by the truckload on drugstore shelves, at prices far cheaper than the $30 to $50 it would cost a preteen to purchase just one dose of Plan B, let alone go wild with it.

But part of what was most disturbing about Obama’s statement was his reliance on language that reveals his paternalistic approach to women and their health.

“As the father of two daughters,” Obama told reporters, “I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine.”

First of all, the president was not talking about “various rules.” He was supporting a very specific rule, one that prevents young women from easily obtaining a drug that can help them control their reproductive lives, at an age when their economic, educational, familial and professional futures are perhaps most at risk of being derailed by an unplanned pregnancy. “As the father of two daughters,” Obama might want to reconsider his position on preventing young women from being able to exercise this form of responsibility over their own bodies and lives.

But as an American, I think it is important for my president not to turn to paternalistic claptrap and enfeebling references to the imagined ineptitude and irresponsibility of his daughters – and young women around the country – to justify a curtailment of access to medically safe contraceptives. The notion that in aggressively conscribing women’s abilities to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancy Obama is just laying down some Olde Fashioned Dad Sense diminishes an issue of gender equality, sexual health and medical access. Recasting this debate as an episode of “Father Knows Best” reaffirms hoary attitudes about young women and sex that had their repressive heyday in the era whence that program sprang.

A question of who should be allowed access to a safe form of contraception is at its root a question of how badly we want to, or believe that we can, police young women’s sexuality. When Obama is talking about his daughters, we know he’s not really basing his opinion on an anxiety that they might suffer the adverse effects of drinking a whole jug of Pepto-Bismol or swallowing 50 Advil, things that any 11-year-old who walks into a CVS with a wad of cash could theoretically do. When he says that he wants to “apply common sense” to questions of young women’s access to emergency contraception, he is telegraphing his discomfort with the idea of young women’s sexual agency, or more simply, with the idea of them having sex lives at all. This discomfort might be  comprehensible from an emotional, parental point of view. But these are not familial discussions; this is a public-health policy debate, and at a time when “16 and Pregnant” airs on MTV, the fact that a daddy feels funny about his little girls becoming grown-ups has no place in a discussion of healthcare options for America’s young women. It is also nearly impossible to imagine a similar use of language or logic to justify a ban of condom sales.

Moreover, Obama’s invocation of his role as a father is an insult to the commitments and priorities of those on the other side of this issue. Are we to believe that those who support the increased availability of emergency contraception do not have daughters? That if they do, they care less about those daughters than Barack Obama does about his? And that if they do not, they cannot possibly know better than a father of daughters what is best for young women? Why should we be asked to believe that Obama’s paternity imbues him with more moral authority on the subject of women’s health and reproductive lives than the investments of doctors, researchers and advocates who – regardless of their parental status – have dedicated their lives to working on behalf of increased reproductive health options. This line of argument is no better than the Mama Grizzly argument developed by Sarah Palin during 2010′s midterm elections, in which she asserted that her band of super-conservative mothers were qualified for office because “moms just know when there’s something wrong.”

Barack Obama has long had a tin ear for language that has anything to do with women and even more specifically with women’s rights. While on the campaign trail for president in 2008, he waved off a female reporter who asked a question about the future of the auto industry, referring to her diminutively as “sweetie.” The same year, attempting to play both sides on the issue of reproductive freedom, he gave an interview with a religious magazine in which he asserted his support for states’ restrictions on late-term abortions as long as there was an exception for the health of the mother, but added that he didn’t “think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother.” Attempting to recover from that line and reassert his pro-choice bona fides, Obama later clarified that of course he believed in a medical exemption for “serious clinical mental health diseases,” just not when seeking a late-term abortion is “a matter of feeling blue,” perpetuating a wildly irresponsible vision of the rare and difficult late-term abortion as a moody impulse-buy.

Today also isn’t the first time he’s used references to members of his family to make a larger offensive point about women. Back in 2009, when charges that his officially female-friendly administration included some boys’ club tendencies hit the front of the New York Times, Obama dismissed the claims as “bunk.” Reporter Mark Leibovich noted at the time that the president “often points out that he is surrounded by strong females at home,” an argument that not only mimics an old saw about how being henpecked by women is equivalent to respecting them, but reflects a dynamic as old as patriarchal power itself and sidesteps the question of how strong females are treated at work. In 2010, while appearing on “The View,” Obama made a creaky Take-My-Wife-Please joke about how he wanted to appear on “a show that Michelle actually watched” as opposed to the news shows she usually flips past. The joke being that his missus, the one he met when she mentored him at a high-powered law firm, just doesn’t have a head for news delivered by anyone other than Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

It should no longer come as a surprise that the president of the United States is, on perhaps an unconscious level, an old-school patriarch. What’s startling is the degree to which Obama seems not to have learned from any of his past gaffes, how no one seems to have told him – or told him in a way that he’s absorbed – that the best way to address a question of women’s health and rights is probably not by making it about his role as a father.

This might be an especially valuable chat to have with the president as he moves into 2012 and toward an election in which he is going to be relying on the support of people he has just managed to anger, offend and speak down to — women. The least he could do is learn to address them with respect.

But has it actually whetted the film business’s appetite for more female-driven projects? Salon called Lynda Obst, producer of movies like “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Contact” and “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days,” the television show “Hot in Cleveland,” the author of “Hello, He Lied” and all-around movie sage, to see what, if anything, has changed in her town this summer.

Did the success of “Bridesmaids” make a difference to your business?

Yes. It had the biggest impact of any women’s movie that I can remember in my career.

In your whole career, which began with “Flashdance” in 1983?

Yeah. It came at a moment when any movies for women, women’s comedies — forget dramas, there are no dramas for anybody — but women’s comedies, women’s thrillers were going to get put by the wayside forever. Women’s projects were dying everywhere. That’s why the opening of “Bridesmaids” was so critical for every woman in features, why its success was attended with such profound interest by every woman writer, producer and director in town.

The second important factor was that there were no stars in the movie and it wasn’t tracking in advance.

And that matters because it means that it was the material, not a movie star, that drew people to theaters?

Yes. Its success wasn’t automatic. A star opens a movie. Sandra Bullock opens a movie. But there was nobody in this movie who had ever been in a movie before, so it’s the hardest kind of movie to open.

It means that its success was due to the fact that people enjoyed it, and gave it good word of mouth once the movie started screening. Which leads us to the gigantic thing, which was the revelation that women can open a movie, and also, that this [women's movie] crossed over. Men came. It drew women of all ages and it drew guys and was a major hit. And not just domestically, which is part two of this gigantic thing, because the movie business right now is being driven by international box office.

Comedy doesn’t usually travel well. Movies that travel are movies with very little dialogue, usually dependent on action or family content or big international stars. But “Bridesmaids” did very well internationally. The concept was easy to understand in all languages. It gave us a clue as to what movies will work internationally with women in them. So what we learned is: Broad comedies will sell abroad, even with broads.

What are the immediate effects of this?

There are suddenly projects for women! I’m pitching one right now that is a female-based comedy and people are really responsive to it. And then my directing debut, which was dead in the water at New Line, went from having no momentum to having momentum, the weekend right after “Bridesmaids” opened. “Bridesmaids” meant that the idea of being able to make a movie about women was resuscitated.

Well, for now. What if the next female comedy flops?

If the next one flops, who knows? Two action movies flop and it means nothing; one women’s movie flops and it’s the end. But “Bridesmaids” was followed immediately by the success of “The Help,” which was terrific because that was driven by women too.

So what we’re finding in the American market is that younger male eyeballs are disappearing in large numbers, going to video games, going to the Internet. But women are going to the movies, if you make movies for them.

Now, does this mean we will stop making movies for the younger male quadrant? No, because the young male quadrant likes the same movies as international audiences — action movies, man movies.

Man movies?

“Ironman,” “Spider-Man,” “Batman.” Man movies.

Are studios pursuing women’s projects or are people just feeling like they can pitch them again?

I think the latter. But I think studios were suddenly receptive to them.

This is not the first time in recent memory that a woman’s movie has done well and studios have failed to notice in any permanent way. “The Devil Wears Prada,” your movie “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days,” “Sex and the City” have all been big women-driven hits, and yet women’s movies were on the brink of extinction.

Studios have institutionally short memories when it comes to women’s movies. “Sex and the City II” did better internationally than it did domestically, which would have made you think that they would have noticed it. I mean, that’s what inclines Fox to make “Ice Ages”; sequels do so well internationally. But studios don’t seem to generalize by the same rules in women’s movies as they do for other movies.

Every time a woman’s movie does well, it’s a brand-new fact. Every time we rediscover the female audience, it’s astonishing.

So it’s possible that despite “Bridesmaids’” success, four years from now you and I will be having the same conversation about the death of women’s comedy?

Yes.

That’s depressing. But back to the success of “Bridesmaids.” There was a certain amount of social awareness around going to the movie. Because of the press it got, women seemed to be aware that going to see the movie was not just about enjoying it, but about sending a message to Hollywood. Do you think that had an impact on its box office?

Well, I know there was tremendous awareness in Los Angeles that we had to open this movie. I believe it happened in New York too, but I don’t know that that happened nationally.

What happened nationally was that there was a hunger for something for women to relate to, because there’s usually nothing out there for them. It’s what happens with an urban audience with Tyler Perry.

I had a sense from friends in other cities that they were going with their girlfriends and that they knew it was made for them.  It’s so rare that there’s a movie made for them. It generated such excitement.

You would think that that excitement alone would send a message that there is an eager audience out there for material about women.

Well, I think you can see a lot of that reaction on television. It is the year of women on television. Television is much more female-friendly than Hollywood. There are a tremendous number of female executives, and when they see something like “Bridesmaids,” it’s much easier to react fast to it, and there’s less institutional resistance. They love the zeitgeist.

But timing-wise, this season of television was already a done deal before “Bridesmaids” opened, so it can’t have been a reaction, can it?

Well, the [final] decisions about this current fall season were made at the upfronts, which roughly coincided [Editor's note: actually, directly coincided in mid-May] with the opening of “Bridesmaids,” so there actually could have been a connection.

But also, I have just been through the next season of creative development and let me tell you it’s just as female-friendly as the one that’s on air now. There are shows about women and girlfriends and not just couples. There is television about women, for women. Real women.

“Hey A Lot Of Ladies,” began a mass email I received on Wednesday from Emily Bracken, a writer and acquaintance. She was forwarding a message from Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, a producer and the screenwriter of “Legally Blonde” and “The House Bunny,” who has no professional connection with “Bridesmaids” but is nonetheless agitating on its behalf. “I know you get a lot of emails about donating money to worthy causes, but I’d like to draw your attention to one in particular: The Chick Flick,” Smith wrote. “It is currently on the Motion Picture Association of America’s list of Endangered Species and it faces extinction if we don’t act now.”

Urging everyone to buy tickets to the movie, Smith continued, “Let’s show the planet we are capable of queefing out some major box-office lady-power.”

Bracken added her own message on top of Smith’s. It read, in part, “I encourage each and every one of you to see ‘Bridesmaids’ this weekend, not just because it’s hilarious, but because we MUST show Hollywood that women DO want movies that are not vapid romcoms or something about shopping … A lot is riding on this movie. So please bring your girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, and neighbors out in droves. And please, if you feel moved, encourage others to do so, as well.”

Yes we can … buy tickets to a Kristen Wiig movie in an effort to persuade Hollywood that multidimensional women exist, spend money and deserve to be represented on film.

What’s motivating this campaign is simple: Hollywood studios do not make comedies for or about women anymore. Yes, they used to. As recently as a few decades ago, when comedy stars like Lily Tomlin, Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn stalked through theaters alongside supporting players like Teri Garr, Carol Kane and Madeline Kahn, bringing us movies that were sometimes sublime and sometimes disposable, but which had women at their heart. Think “Private Benjamin,” “9 to 5,” “Outrageous Fortune,” “Down and Out in Beverly Hills”…

Those days are long gone, and we now inhabit an entertainment universe in which everything male-centered is standard, and everything female-centered is female (yes, this dynamic extends into publishing, politics and professionalism, but for now, let’s keep it to Hollywood). What that means in practical terms is that women will plonk down dollars to see a male-dominated action movie, a girl-gobbling horror flick, or a dude-centric comedy just as easily as they’ll pay for the kind of female-fueled movie that is literally made for them. Men, meanwhile, have apparently been so conditioned to find anything female emasculating (notwithstanding the expectation that their girlfriends find anything male, including “Thor,” scintillating) that they cannot be moved to sit through any movie with a fully developed woman at its center. As Tad Friend recently put it in his New Yorker profile of the actress Anna Faris — in a sentence mentioned frequently by “Bridesmaids” activists — “Studio executives believe that male moviegoers would rather prep for a colonoscopy that experience a woman’s point of view, particularly if that woman drinks or swears or has a great job or an orgasm.”

So studio executives simply don’t make movies, and especially comedies, from a woman’s point of view anymore. Which doesn’t even make that much economic sense, given the fact that even without a male audience, women are so powerful a consumer force that they can make the few movies that do focus on them successes — see “The Devil Wears Prada,” or “Sex and the City” and “Sex and the City 2.” (Actually, don’t see “Sex and the City 2,” but consider what its high grosses say about exactly how desperate women are to find themselves reflected on the screen in anything other than supporting, carelessly sketched nubile girlfriend roles.)

Enter “Bridesmaids,” a movie chock full of female talent, based on a script solicited from Wiig after she impressed bro-mantic comedy king Judd Apatow in her supporting role in “Knocked Up.” If this movie can win the box office (or, frankly, even get close) on its all-important opening weekend, the thinking goes, studio executives will have an economic incentive to make more female-friendly films like it.

The movie is being sold in the vein of Apatow’s boyish burp-fests: Trailers focus on a food poisoning scene that involves women in bridal gowns excreting from both ends. But the plot line — which centers on Wiig’s 30-something character, down on her luck professionally and personally, being put through the modern maid-of-honor mill by her best friend — offers the promise of something really good: an exploration of female social relationships, all the more complicated in an age when we do not all marry by 22 but create our adult lives alongside our girlfriends.

From the trailers, I have come to hope that “Bridesmaids” might in fact be a broader and more commercial take on the kind of relationship Nicole Holofcener painfully and hilariously picked apart in 1996′s “Walking and Talking,” one of the best movies about women ever made. (Holofcener has consistently made funny, stirring flicks about chicks, but they are by no stretch of the imagination blockbusters, or even major releases. It is a testament to their rarity that after her 2006 movie “Friends With Money” concluded, one of the two girlfriends I’d gone to see it with remained in her seat, staring at the screen. When I nudged her to move, she looked at me balefully and said, “I didn’t want it to end. I want it to keep going.”)

I have not seen “Bridesmaids,” though I know many people who have said good things about it, including Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams. And Tuesday night, before receiving the email from Bracken forwarded by Smith, I was moved to post on Facebook Melissa Silverstein’s explanation from “Women and Hollywood” of “Why Bridesmaids Matters,” after seeing a link to Silverstein’s post on the Facebook page of movie producer (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days”) Lynda Obst. Obst had written, “Seriously, we have to see this movie this weekend. If you are a woman, like women, or simply don’t hate them … if we don’t go, they won’t build them anymore.”

Just a few minutes later, Farrin Jacobs, an editorial director at HarperCollins Children’s books, commented on the link that though she had already seen the film, she had made a date to see it again this weekend with girlfriends, “because I want funny lady movies to keep existing.” Jacobs later told me that her determination was born of that New Yorker piece, and how sad she’d become thinking that men just won’t watch female characters. She’d been in Los Angeles and scored tickets to the “Bridesmaids” premiere, and she claims that at one point, the movie made her laugh so hard that she cried. “Seeing the movie and thinking about the Anna Faris article, and knowing that if this movie didn’t do well, that would be it for at least the next couple of years for the life of female comedies, I’m trying to get everybody I know to see it,” said Jacobs. “Also, it’s funny.”

So here is this movie. This movie that may be silly, may be gross, may be great, may be terrible, may have hidden under its flatulent exterior a nuanced and too rarely spied depiction of female connection. It seems that it really matters — to Hollywood and its press and its executives and its female moviemakers and storytellers and performers — how it does. As Obst, who has no professional involvement in “Bridesmaids,” told me when I contacted her about this story, “We are all watching it like we made it.” The film’s director, Paul Feig, who perhaps has copped an overly chivalrous tone recently, told the Onion’s AV club, “It’s not often that a studio will allow a movie that’s all driven by women to be made, so I felt the pressure of, ‘If I screw this up, it’s going to fuck things up for women.’”

I just keep thinking about Wiig, the driving creative force behind the existence of the film, having been thrust, apparently unwillingly, into the role of feminist figurehead. I imagine her holed up in a hotel room, Hillary Clinton style, waiting for the polls to close and the weekend box office numbers to be finalized.

Me, I’ve been wondering how I’m going to get out of the house to the movie theater. I am home on a maternity leave, a 6-week-old beside me, just beginning to figure out baby sitting. Perhaps I will try to take my daughter to the earliest neighborhood matinee, provided she’s not fussing. She’s in the only stage of a woman’s life in which she’s actively encouraged to do what the ladies in this movie apparently are doing: belching, farting, barfing. More than that, maybe it will be an investment in her moviegoing future, an effort to ensure that she will have years ahead of her in which she has a chance to see herself, her friendships, her relationships, her work and her life reflected back at her in a way that makes her laugh till she cries.