Oxygen upfronts In New York with Tori and Dean

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Oxygen — the nearly 10-year-old women’s network that was acquired by NBC Universal in late 2007 — had its upfront presentation today in New York.

The theme was girly-disco fun-time, judging by the baubles and the ravioli and the pink boas and the faceted glass baubles everywhere.

The most important news from today is that they are still not bringing back ‘Campus Ladies,’ canceled two years ago.

But by way of apology (to me, as I am the only one who cares about that), they did bring in a plus-sized all-female dance troupe from Hazlett, N.J., who did a dreamy routine to Britney Spears’ ‘Womanizer’! (Thanks! It took me only three months to get that song out of my head!) It was like Sparkle Motion, all grown up.

And they didn’t really look that plus-sized in their shimmery lamé shirts and velvety pants — although toothpick Tori Spelling was there, so maybe the sense of scale was way off. Spelling and her husband, Dean Something-Or-Other, the Canadian guy, were there to pump the expansion of their magical enterprise of welcoming TV viewers into their lives.

In addition to ‘Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood’ (season 4!), they are going to be doing like webisodes and movie-of-the-week-type stuff. Oh, and they have done a pilot for a ‘couples-themed makeover show’ — ‘Mr. & Mrs. Makeover.’ This presentation was pretty fun, because it was weird. There was gaudiness everywhere. And the execs said fun things such as: ‘This season of ‘Bad Girls Club’ was the youngest and most upscale!’

This is a slightly surprising thing to say regarding a show that’s essentially about women with, let’s say, advanced impulse control issues. Also: ‘We’re getting younger and richer, living every young woman’s dream!’ I love it! Also I giggled when they said, ‘Our digital properties have exploded!’ (The punchline is entirely theirs, however, as their Web traffic is up and something like tripled over a year ago.)

Who is the Oxygen watcher, did you ask? Well, they are women who are ‘in an acquisition stage of their life.’ (Shoppy!) They are ‘recession-resilient.’ (Not laid off — yet!) They are, in an oft-repeated phrase, ‘trenders, spenders and recommenders.’ (Oh, boy.) This is all also probably true!

And yet, what young woman in American isn’t in that demographic? Do you spend money when you shouldn’t? Do you tell your friends what sucks and what doesn’t? Do you like to buy stuff? Congratulations: You are a woman between 16 and 44 who is not in prison.

Here is the good news about Oxygen: There’s ‘Dance Your A** Off,’ which is a dance competition show for the larger among us, which is pretty fabulous. (The less good news: There is also a ‘docucomedy’ show called ‘Addicted to Beauty,’ which is about people who work at a plastic surgery center who are too vain and dumb to answer the front desk phone when it rings. That will perform well.)

But more good news! ‘The Naughty Kitchen’ is a reality show about a big, beautiful chef with a fun, sassy attitude. Look! Two shows about big beautiful people that aren’t about crying while contemplating cellulite. Yay!

The slate is, however, fairly slim. There’s also ‘Keshia and Kaseem,’ a reality show about our pal Keshia Knight Pulliam and her boyfriend (who, by the way, she wouldn’t even acknowledge the existence of to us when we spoke in February! Hmmph!) that execs said documented their struggle to manage their ‘exploding careers.’ That seems a little stretchy, but OK, we’re down! Finally!

For the record, Tuesday at the Bravo upfronts, we noted the stiffness and corporate speak of NBC Uni lady-net honcho Lauren Zalaznick. Well, today she was alive with pleasure! The network’s success, she said, is not an accident — though ‘the failures, those are an accident.’ Heh.

She also remarked that she was amused to find a post-post-post-feminist such as herself atop a structure that was pushing an iPhone app called The Hormoneoscope. (It sounds handy! I would use it if I ovulated!)

Most delightfully, Zalaznick even went so far to joke that in addition to obsessively tracking age and income of viewers, someday Oxygen should start tracking viewer’s median weight. Don’t worry, Lauren — someday Wall-E will handle that data for us — in the future, when we’ve spended and recommended and trended as hard as we can and a life before the TV has gotten us all over 300 pounds.

-- Choire Sicha