"...Diamonds...and Rubies...In The Rough...."

Just had a Kenny Rogers moment.

More precisely, a Mel Tillis moment.

For those, either culturally or generationally, who find the references obscure, permit me a few lines of back story.

Kenny Rogers was a very successful country/pop singer.

Mel Tillis was a very successful country singer and songwriter.

Mel Tillis wrote and recorded a song that did fairly well for him on the country charts.

Kenny Rogers recorded the same song and did phenomenally well for himself, and Mel, on the pop charts.

"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town".

Digging through the celeb dumpsters this morning, I came across a story that activated my Mel music memory chip, playing the first line of said superhit.

"...you painted up your lips / and rolled and curled your tinted hair...".

The story that conjured up the country song, though, wasn't about a Ruby.

It was about a Snooki.

Yesterday Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi of "Jersey Shore" tweeted pictures herself without liner, lashes, blush, bronzer, or, in fact, any makeup at all.

"No make up day :) and IDC :)," Polizzi wrote.
The consensus was that she looked really good without all the extra glitz.


I haven't been bashful about my disdain for "Jersey Shore" in general or, specifically, the whole "cheap" girls and guys presentation that frames the whole thing.

But, on a purely "non-partisan" basis, here's my impression of the au natural Nicole vs. the slathered up Snooki.

Nicole is an attractive young woman.

And neither needs, nor benefits from, the paint job that turns her into, at best, a caricature of the girl in high school that everybody "dated" but nobody took home to meet mama.

But, sexist stereotypes notwithstanding, there's a couple of obvious, more insidious issues hidden underneath the hues and shades.

First, the slathering screams lack of self esteem.

Long before there was a Snooki, I was beating a drum in print and on air about the lopsided message that contemporary culture, mostly the testosterone soaked faction, sends to women regarding the need to "paint and curl and roll and tint".

My bumper sticker philosophy on the whole matter has been oft repeated.

"God made women beautiful....Maybelline and Max Factor spend millions trying to convince women that they're not....think about it".

I still don't much care for Snooki or JWoww or The Sitch (or Sleepy or Grumpy or Dopey or Doc, for that matter) but I'd be the first person to tell Nicole that she's a good looking girl who should take a pass on the Maybelline and Max Factor and go with what God gave her.

Given the show's ratings, there's not much chance that Snook is going to stop taking her love to town.

Seems, though, like all that painting and rolling and curling and tinting is a waste of a pretty face.