Jewel: Bogus Nashvillian

Are Nashvillians so butt-ugly that Nashville Lifestyles magazine has to pick a ringer for the title of Nashville's Most Beautiful Person? Somehow or another, pop-star-turned-country-singer Jewel has managed to snow our town into thinking she's a Nashvillian—even though she doesn't actually, uh, live here. And Nashville Lifestyles, a property of The Tennessean, chose her for the cover shot and feature story of its "Nashville's 25 Most Beautiful People" issue.

Now some of you are going to claim this is a case of sour grapes, as inside sources have revealed that I have finished 26th on the list for three years in a row, but I swear this isn't personal. The really weird part is that the magazine clearly states that she's not a Nashvillian:

"We love that while she spends as much time as she can with her new husband on their Texas ranch (she just got married to rodeo star Ty Murray), she also frequents Nashville often and serves as a judge on Nashville Star."

(Perhaps Scarlett Johansson would have won, except that she rarely frequents Nashville.)

Jewel clearly states that she stays in a hotel while she's here. (We've heard she favors The Hermitage.) I mean, if she at least owned a part-time condo or something—or if she had been buried unobtrusively near the bottom of the list—we could give Nashville Lifestyles a pass. But this is just a slap in the face to genuine Music City hotties.

In fairness to the magazine, Jewel's MySpace page lists her hometown as Nashville. Furthermore, this isn't the first local magazine to cite Jewel's Nashville bones. Some other Nashville rag—that would be us—made the same error in a story just a couple of weeks ago ("The Simple Life," Sept. 25). It too featured her visage on the cover, in an image parodying Alan LeQuire's "Musica" sculpture.