Not that Jen, the Other Jen

Image Credit: Flickr user laram777

Some of you may have heard about a little show that made its television debut last week: Jersey Shore. Filmed in a shore town much farther north than the ones Philadelphians usually frequent (e-hem, New York, this is your people, not ours), the show follows eight twenty-somethings in a sort of poor-man's Real World—living together, getting jobs, hooking up, drinking too much. We've seen it before, but this one has much, much worse hair and much, much oranger tans. And oh yeah, only one of the cast members is actually from New Jersey. Way to represent, MTV.

Anyway, it turns out that one of the show's cast members is named Jenni (although you might know her better as J-WOWW). The first episode proved that, if nothing else, the girl likes to show off her cleavage. And such displays have had men searching the internet for more information on the Franklin Square, NY-based temptress. Unfortunately, it seems that searching for any derivative of "Jenni" (Jenn, Jen, Jenny, Jennifer, etc.) plus "Jersey Shore" isn't pointing them to more information about the MTV starlet, but rather to former Phillyist Jen A. Miller's Down the Shore with Jen blog. Jen, who even wrote a book about the shore, has been blogging as the Jersey Shore Jen for a couple years now. But that doesn't mean that her accidental visitors care who came first. One recent commenter wrote:

Yo what the hell I thought this was a blog about the MTv show Jersey Shore... there's a chick with fake boobs on there named Jenny. you are misleading me, other Jen.

Jen, the real Jen, has been a vocal advocate for the real New Jersey over the years, taking a firm stand against other television shows that portend to represent her home state (Real Housewives, anyone?), and we agree with her. While MTV's version of the shore is entertaining in a train-wrecky sort of way, it's not the sort of place we'd like to visit. And it's not the sort of place that the many Phillyists who live or work just over the Ben Franklin Bridge would ever inhabit.

So stay strong, knowers-of-the-real-Shore. Watch the show if you must (and we'll admit to having seen more of it than we're proud of), but the next time that anyone says anything about Jenni from the Jersey Shore, correct them. It's Jen, and she's the real deal. No "Guidette" bullshit—just genuine shore love.