The men's magazine, FHM recently did a photo shoot with eight rising country females, featuring them on the cover of the March magazine in very skimpy clothes. While not distasteful to me, I was a bit shocked that they'd reveal so much. All of these women are gorgeous, and nice to look at. Other than Jamie O'Neal and Jennifer Hanson, none of them has seen Top 10 hits as of yet. Will this help their cause? Or will it offend the average country music listener?

The eight stars pictured are Kerry Harvick, Jennifer Hanson, Lauren Lucas, Catherine Britt, Shelly Fairchild, Jessi Alexander, Jamie O'Neal and Tift Merritt. When asked to be part of the shoot, RCA's Catherine Britt received a pitch that read in part, "Although the magazine is known for its sexy pictorials, FHM is moving toward a more sophisticated presentation of our subjects — one that is beautiful and alluring." When she and the others arrived on the set, it was bras and panties, not flowing shirts and beautiful things.

The Tennessean recently printed an article on this, and interviewed four (Catherine Britt, Kerry Harvick, Lauren Lucas and Jessi Alexander) of the eight beauties, and they said they felt pressured to wear less clothing than they wanted, but they were happy with their decision to do the shoot.

I think the thing that bothered me most was not the photos, but with the headline for the feature which reads in part, "Presenting eight reasons to forgive the musical genre responsible for Garth Brooks, line dancing and Hee Haw."

That's degrading to country music, if you ask me. Why should we want to be forgiven for Garth Brooks? The man sold over 100,000,000 records, and brought millions of fans to country music. He gave great shows, and never gouged the public, instead keeping his ticket prices around $20.00 a person. This man was a positive thing in country music. I also see nothing wrong with line dancing or Hee Haw.

Lately, it's gotten to the point that CMT (which stands for Country Music Television, but is far from it) seems to have this same attitude. In these Top 40 this, or Top 10 that shows they're always playing, there are constantly people commenting on the artists and making fun of them. I think there was a show with "Most Embarassing Moments" or something and the people that made comments were saying, "Oh look at that hair? Oh, where did he learn to dance" stuff like that. The fact that the station is owned by the company that also owns MTV and VH1 says it all. They're making the channel into another MTV. I don't even watch CMT much anymore. Instead I watch GAC, which never bashes artists, and has REAL country music on the shows they play, not rap, or rodeo, or Nascar, or who knows what else.

Sorry for going off on a tangent, that's not the point of this article. I'm curious how other fans feel about this pictorial. Please give your opinion on the poll below. And, if you have more to say than just casting your vote, I invite you to visit the forum, where you can voice your opinion on this, and any other country music topic.