There was so much buzz last year about the smart, sexy and stylish red-hot mamas on Desperate Housewives you’d think they had invented the type. But if you remember back two years, their predecessor was a modern TV yummy mummy who debuted in 2003 on the Thursday night hit The O.C. As played by Kelly Rowan, the character of Kirsten Cohen is not only blonde and beautiful, but has a loving husband, a still-hot marriage, a teenage son and a high-powered career in real estate and publishing. Granted, she also epitomizes some of the less-sexy realities of real-life overscheduled, overworked and sometimes overwhelmed mothers – although in a much more glam setting (and with a closet full of Jimmy Choo stilettos). The O.C. is a surprise critical hit and a full-blown pop-culture phenomenon, with Rowan’s portrayal of a new, cool motherhood as the cherry on the guilty-pleasure sundae.

So when did TV mothers suddenly turn all modern and realistic? These days, father definitely doesn’t know best. In TV’s early days, shows like Leave It to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show championed an idyllic life with Dad at the head of the table and Mom, a devoted domestic creature, by his side. “The idealized mother of the 1950s, such as June Cleaver and Donna Reed, probably had little root in reality,” explains Ron Simon, a curator at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. “One of the first TV mothers to crack that role was Maude, a liberal feminist on her fourth marriage. She was not an idealized portrait.”

Flaws and all, motherhood is back in style this fall and the rebirth of a 1950s staple isn’t taking place just on the small screen. This season is celebrating the return of the circle skirt and a continuing style rage for the Hermes Kelly bag. There’s a new appreciation in the air for mid-century modern architecture and design. We’re appropriating the conventions of the 1950s with a fresh attitude. So it makes sense that on TV – one of pop culture’s basic common denominators – today’s post-feminism is putting a new twist on the dusty old stereotypes of motherhood.

When I meet Rowan at Le Pain Quotidien on Melrose Avenue, she’s dressed for “everyday” in a gold Marni jacket, an opera-length strand of Lanvin pearls, jeans and a pair of espadrilles by her favourite label, the fashion-forward Dutch designer Dries Van Noten. (She says the well-heeled character of Kirsten is a lot more conservative and less casual than her.) She looks like an L.A. hottie – not a girl born in Ottawa and raised in Toronto, who once modelled for Eaton’s and the Bay catalogues, and certainly not a Newport Beach mother (“a Newpsie,” as Rowan dubs her character on The O.C.).

You might be surprised to learn that Rowan, who is now 38, has been a hard-working actress for nearly 21 years. She appeared in the Paris-filmed Canadian TV series Mount Royal in 1987 (although her acting career was interrupted by a stint pursuing a commerce degree at the University of Western Ontario). Her long list of acting credits includes not only gunslinger Mattie Shaw in the TV series Lonesome Dove , but also Erin, a single small-town mother in the Canadian cult classic, Jet Boy , and Peter Pan’s mother in Steven Spielberg’s Hook , her breakout Hollywood role.