PAINT ME A SUPREME

BEFORE AND AFTER...

"We make her paint her face and dance!"

John Lennon once sang that line, convinced that "woman is the nigger of the world." Well, John was only human, and he was often wrong. He was singing a lot of other protest songs at the same time, on everything from John Sinclair to "if you had the luck of the Irish...you'd wish you was English instead" to something about David Peel being "real."

And then he was grunting on stage, "OK, so flower power didn't work..." And neither did protest songs, because the status quo turned out to be ok with a lot of people. Especially painted ladies.

John didn't realize it. Women LIKE to paint their faces. And they LIKE to dance.

Take Diana Ross. Without the paint, she's just a very ordinary old (69, to be exact) lady.

Smeared up with the paint, and she's the glamorous SUPREME. You name her...Lady Gaga. Big fat Adele. Madonna. The image in your mind is...PAINTED. In fact, on Halloween thousands and thousands can imitate these women very easily just by painting-by-the-numbers. You might recall Lindsay Lohan recently painting herself up to look like Elizabeth Taylor for a movie, and doing a magazine photo shoot as Marilyn Monroe. Call it virtual Photoshopping.

Anyone disgusted by this? No, everything changed when hippies became Yuppies, and when women realized that they shouldn't throw away their huge advantage in fakery and paint.

Oh, maybe in college it's ok to walk around in a t-shirt and jeans and no make-up. Any 19 year-old is well worth a fuck. But when it comes time to get that big job, or to find work as an actress or singer, or to gain the edge in landing that Hedge Fund hubby...it's time to paint...to get the fake boobs...to put on the fashion wardrobe...to become a costumed caricature. If you're artistic enough to come up with just the right hair color, lip gloss, placement of fake mole, etc. etc. you could become an ICON!

That's why you were puzzled at the dull image on the top left...and began to smile warmly when you recognized DIANA ROSS on the top right.

Reality? Let's paint over it. Diana does. Halle Berry does. Rihanna does. Beyonce does. Billie Joe Armstrong does...