Irvine Women, It Appears You Have It Made

Everyone knows women have it made. Well, men know it, anyway.

Lo and behold, Irvine women have it made more than most.

In a “Best Cities for Women” survey, Ladies Home Journal ranks America’s 200 largest cities and puts Irvine in fourth place. Only Ann Arbor, Mich.; Madison, Wis.; and Scottsdale, Ariz., outpolled “this sparkling Orange County community,” as the magazine referred to our green-belted, master-planned municipality.

No one suggests the survey would stand up to Gallup Poll rigors, but the magazine says it relied on a number of official “sources” as well as reader responses to rank the cities. The sources were as diverse as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Blockbuster Video.

Irvine scored high in safety (at the top of readers’ concerns) and had the highest “lifestyle” rating. It did well in “fitness, discount shopping, male-to-female ratio and romance-related videos.”

Sylvia Beez was pushing a shopping cart of toys to her car in Westpark Plaza when I approached her with the survey results. She’s a 34-year-old clinical psychologist but currently a stay-at-home mom with a 3-year-old and a 1 1/2-year-old. Beez, who grew up in Switzerland, moved into the Westpark neighborhood in Irvine two years ago.

“I don’t know if I’m representative, because I come from Europe,” she said. “I think this is a good place for a family to live. They have lots of green space, and the weather is good so you can go out with the kids all the time.

“One of the negative things is, it’s quite boring. It’s, how you say, everything is planned. Everything looks the same. Culturally, there’s nothing here. I think we wouldn’t live here if it weren’t for our children.”

Beez and her husband preferred Laguna Beach but couldn’t afford a home there. Beez likes the fact that women are actively engaged in Irvine politics (the magazine also cited that), and she also appreciates the academic presence of UC Irvine.

Tonya Axton was midway through a bagel with her 2-year-old daughter when I asked whether Irvine really was stress-free for women. “I’m not a very stressed-out person to begin with,” she said. “It’s a fairly mellow community; not a lot of hustle and bustle.”

She and her husband and two children moved to Irvine six months ago from Santa Ana. I asked if she had thought of Irvine as being great for women. “I don’t think I ever thought of it in terms of male versus female,” Axton, 30, said, “but I like the community. I do feel a lot more relaxed here. I’m thinking, ‘Is it where I am in my life now, or is it the actual community?’ It’s a little bit of both, I think.”

The survey validated what Toby Schlup already knew. She’s 53, married and the owner of an insurance agency. “There’s so much here for women,” she said, and began ticking off a list. “There’s a lot of services . . . a lot of programs at the university . . . classes you could take at Irvine Valley College . . . the shopping is great. I could live my entire life in Irvine and not leave and be happy, and I’ve traveled lots of places in the world. Every time I come home, I breathe a sigh of relief, because I love it so much.”

A Turtle Rock resident, Schlup said Irvine isn’t as boring as some might think. “You just have to look for it,” she said. “If you seek, you will find.”

I asked if it made sense for the magazine to rank cities for women. Schlup said yes, citing safety as something important to women that men may not dwell on. “It feels like a safe place for women,” she said. “You read of isolated incidents, but generally I don’t hesitate to go to the market at night.”

And, then there’s that open space that Ladies Home Journal cited. “I look out on a big open field, and I don’t feel I could find that in many cities in Southern California,” Schlup said. “I have a true sense of feeling a lot of open space.”

The only other California city to make the Top 10 was Thousand Oaks. The other Orange County cities in the Top 200 were Huntington Beach at No. 15, Orange at No. 17, Fullerton at No. 27, Garden Grove at No. 54, Anaheim at No. 65, and Santa Ana at No. 86.

Sorry, Los Angeles, you came in 154th. Ranking dead last at No. 200 was Corpus Christi, Texas.

The survey would seem to be all about women, but the big Orange County winners, it seems to me, are the men of Irvine.

Guys, the next time your wife or girlfriend complains about her lot in life, just throw the survey in her face. Finally, you’ll have some proof to back up your standard comeback line: “Baby, you don’t know how good you’ve got it.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com