The Country Club

I love country music and make no bones about it. I smirk along with their ridiculous ballads about love lost, "That's my girl, my whole world, but it ain't my truck". I smile at their simplicity, "She said she's going out with her girlfriends, for margaritas at the Holiday Inn.. Lord have mercy, my only thought is tequila makes her clothes fall off." I melt at the cheesy love songs, "She's so New York, and then L.A., and every town along the way, and she's every place that I've never been... she's making love on rainy nights, she's a stroke of Christmas lights, and she's everything I want to do again." Give me Faith. Give me Tim. Play me some Dolly and Cash. Turn up Brookes and Dunn. The idea of complicated loved distilled down to a pair of tight faded blue jeans and an old pick-up? I'm in.

But keep the ridiculous videos away from me.

What is up with every country artist on the planet shooting videos on the beach? We get the irony that you men are singing about your cowboy life (though the only horse you've probably ever seen is on your oxford)... You're tough mountain dudes with big penises but you're surrounded in ocean. Ooooh... ironic. Let the seagulls dump on your hat and move on. But please tell me what is up with you women artists in full length dresses singing in the middle of the sea with the waves rolling over your braless tops? I get that sex sells. But every single video? Is even country being reduced to bobble headed babes and botox rippled men crooning about getting laid with sand up their crack?

I suppose I'm cynical because I just can't relate. A trip to the beach with two kids is a three hour adventure - and that's just getting there. I can't picture myself arching my back in the surf without worrying about sunburns, exploding diapers and sand in the peanut butter and jelly. Even before I had children, I never could buy into the fantasy of the love stricken siren yodeling her mating call. Blame my cellulite. Blame my fat ass. But me wriggling on sand is about as appealing as reading one more headline about Jude Law's uncircumsized foreskin.

I'm so sick of plastic people with their plastic boobs and puffed up cars and puffed up lips and totally hard bodies and totally hard hearts. Isn't there an inbetween line where we don't have to emulate Roseanne but we don't have to feel bad for not looking like an anorexic country singer - who is supposed to be singing about real people? Now this is not coming from jealousy - I truly am content with what I look like. I don't worry about my husband cheating on me. The fact is, he can't multi-task. But I wonder how I'm going to raise a girl to be strong when everywhere she turns is image after image of waifs crying over oversized men. I know I'm not the first person to raise this concern, but I'm the only one raising my daughter, so until I find a solution, you'll hear this from me again.

Now if you'll excuse me, CMT's Top 20 Countdown is on.