By Jane Glenn Haas
The Orange County Register

Ah, the Ya-Ya's. The biggest thing since the Red Hat Society. The hottest trend since Italian charm bracelets. The latest message that women of all ages want to drink, laugh, share with girlfriends who have silly names and wear feather boas.

The book by Rebecca Wells was a best seller. The film has earned mixed reviews and still packs the house.

At the 7 p.m. Wednesday neighborhood showing of "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," women with daughters, with friends, with co-workers fill the house. We cheered when a bemused man walked in with his wife.

"He's very brave," my daughter said. "He knows he's going to sit through a chick flick."

Chick flick indeed. The basic story - how three lifelong friends of a Louisiana mama stage an intervention to help her playwright daughter understand her childhood - is not really what the Ya-Ya phenom is about.

Ya-Ya is about celebrating girlfriends.

Girlfriends are a rare commodity in any era and particularly rare in today's peripatetic culture.

In the book and the film, the Ya-Ya's grow up and grow old together. They forgive and nurture one another. They keep secrets.

Like most fictional characters, they may be too good to be true - but hope springs eternal that someday we'll find our Ya-Ya's.

By the time we're "of a certain age," we start to run out of options.

"We never have enough friends," says Charney Herst, a family therapist and author of "Mothers of Difficult Daughters."

Herst, herself of a "certain age," sees her friend circle shrinking as people move to retirement communities or to locations near adult children.

"Now that I'm just divorced and single again, women friends are even more important to me, so I mourn them when they go," she says.

Without her Ya-Ya's, Herst is hoping to become a Red Hat (not to say that Red Hats can't be Ya-Ya's, of course.)

Think this is getting complicated?

Well, the differences between Ya-Ya's and Red Hats are age and purpose. Ya-Ya's can be intergenerational. Red Hats are all women "of a certain age." Red Hats face the passing years with a certain joie de vivre, quoting Jenny Joseph's poem, "When I Am an Old Woman I'll Wear Purple."

Red Hats just want to have fun. Ya-Ya's have fun and also act as a support group.

The similarities between Ya-Ya's and Red Hats are silly names (Queen Caynne Pepper or Queen Mother); costumes (bedecked paper crowns or red hats); and Web sites, www.ya-ya.com/ or www.redhatsociety.com/.

No, this is not a feminist backlash.

This makes as much sense as a bunch of guys on a couch in front of a television set drinking beer and talking Dodgers, or politics, or whether they take Viagra. (That was a joke. Guys don't talk about - you know - personal stuff.)

The Ya-Ya's and the Red Hats are females bonding when they talk about grandchildren, fashion and whether their partners take Viagra. (That is not a joke. Women do talk about personal stuff.)

Women are discovering that they need to be people, not just co-workers, mothers and mates.

I call it part of the aging feminine-mystique attitude.

Smart women know they need other women for support and nourishment. Sometimes girlfriends; sometimes family.

Herst says when our friendship circles shrink, we have to make an effort to expand our horizons.

"We never lose our need for interaction," she says. "In fact, the older we get, the more we need friends to share with."

My daughter - expecting her first child - says family means most to her right now.

"You're my mother, but I also know you're a person and we have a good time together," Joanne says. "That's why I like to be with you."

A lot of family. Enough friends. That's Ya-Ya.

Jane Glenn Haas is the author of "Time of Your Life: Why Almost Everything Gets Better After Fifty." She writes for The Orange County Register. Write to her at: The Register, P.O. Box 11626, Santa Ana, Calif. 92711, or send e-mail to jghaas@aol.com, or through her Web site, www.womansage.com.