The women’s service titles known as the Seven Sisters face a dilemma: What to do as their loyal readers age into their late 40s and early 50s?
    They can try, like Redbook has, to reposition as younger and sexier. But in doing that they risk losing their readers. They also face a challenge from the so-called New Sisters such as Real Simple and O, The Oprah Magazine, both of which launched recently to go after 30-ish working mothers.
     Alternatively, they can resign themselves to aging gracefully with their readers. But as the Baby Boomers become empty nesters, they lose much of their value to advertisers, especially food advertisers.
There’s a third option, though: staying firmly put.
   That’s what Hearst’s Good Housekeeping has decided to do. Good Housekeeping likes its readers just the age they are—or maybe just a couple years younger, says editor in chief Ellen Levine. That is to say, early to mid-forties.
"There’s been a big shift in society," says Levine. "People are getting older, and they’re getting married much older."
    As a result, she says, "We’ve seen an audience shift. People are coming to us at a different age. It not so much about the Boomers--it’s about when do you become a family person.""
    Twenty years ago, Levine notes, women were typically getting married and starting their families in their early twenties. Nowadays it’s just as common for a woman not to have her first child until well into her thirties.
    In other words, a 40-year-old is just as likely to have small children today as was a 25- or 30-year-old in decades past.
   This makes for a natural upward drift in the age of Good Housekeeping readers. As of fall 1999, the median age of its readers was 46.2, up from 44.2 in 1995.
   But that’s about as high as it’s going to get, says Levine.
     "We want to keep the median age in the mid- to low 40s," says Levine.
    To accomplish that, the magazine relies on a slightly younger-skewing editorial mix heavy on fashion, beauty, parenting and relationships, she says.
    Another factor is the covers. You may have noticed some fresh-looking faces on the cover of Good Housekeeping recently, among them Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman, not to mention a certain gap-toothed pop singer who goes by her first name.
    Excepting the singer, these ladies are all in their early or mid-thirties, which makes them considerably younger than the average reader of Good Housekeeping.
    Of course this doesn’t mean the magazine is dropping everything to go after the "Friends" crowd, says Levine. It’s more indicative of a culture increasingly obsessed with youth.
     "There’s been a major shift in point of view," says Levine. "Five or six years ago, there was not as much coverage of younger celebrities as we see today."
    The popular shows of a decade ago tended to be star-driven and family-oriented, with shows built around established, older stars, while today’s sitcoms feature ensembles of 20-something actors.
 "We are also in the journalism business. We want to show who’s new," says Levine. "Good Housekeeping has been around for 115 years. If we stayed with the same top stars year after year, they’d all be in their 60s and 70s now, or more likely dead."
   Besides, notes Levine, with a circulation of more than 4.5 million, Good Housekeeping has millions of readers as young as Aniston or Kidman, and younger than the 42-year-old Madonna, who graced the cover of the April issue.
    Of the Madonna issue, Levine says, "In other parts of her life, we would never have put her on the cover." The thrust of the cover story was that Madonna, pregnant with her second child, had finally awakened to the joys of being a mother and homemaker.
    Levine notes that a writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who lambasted the magazine for putting Madonna on the cover was deluged by emails from readers, some agreeing with her opinion, but many others defending the magazine’s decision to feature the pop icon.
   Says Levine, "Many of our readers literally grew up with her."

-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.

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