The promising Spears trade-up

Showing up at Saturday's Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards tan, toned, and looking more than a shade shy of her 21st rather than her 16th birthday, Britney's little sis Jamie-Lynn is doing her part to help ease the pain for all of her sister's fans who are running out of love, support and feasible excuses for her now paunchy, inked and twice divorced older sibling.

By not spending her days ignoring her children, shopping, mocking substance rehabilitation and trying to pull one over us with hat-attached hair (see here, here and most unfortunately, here), Jamie-Lynn is making being a Spears look pretty damn good. I used to feel sorry for J-L. After all, up until 2004, she faced filling a pretty impressive pair of bejeweled wedged flip-flops. But fast-forward three years, and how that tide it done turned.

In any other city, in any other industry, I'd say this tangerine empire-waisted strapless number by Foley + Corinna was a bit too Kir Royale of a cocktail dress for a 15 year old, but the fact is, it's Hollywood, it's a movie and television awards show, and this is the sister of a girl who, at 18, performed Stronger on-stage in front of 20,000 adolescent girls and their fathers in a pair of fluorescent pink hot pants with matching halter-bra, cowboy boots and cowboy hat. And by "performed" I mean lip-sync, occasionally letting out a live "Uuuuhhh yeeeah, baaaay-beh!" while eating a Blue-Razz blow-pop and writhing on a stripper pole. I'm not going to lie, it changed my life, but still, this is not the kind of style star you want living in the bedroom next door to then 8 year old Jamie-Lynn.

By some miracle, even though they both had contact with the man-boy at fault for Britney's getting fat and sucking, the skank germ seems not to have osmotically transferred to the more ladylike, prettier offspring of Jamie and Lynn, now divorced (a decision I'm convinced is in part due to their realization of how stupid it was to name their child after themselves, hyphen notwithstanding). How else could we explain a relative of this choosing a pair of color-complementing age-appropriate Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent two-inch bronze peeptoes ($334 at revolveclothing.com), classy 23K yellow gold shredded Sam Bradley chain and what has got to be the best eye makeup and sleek hair a Spears has ever seen?

It's clear to me -- the baby Jesus decided to spare this one. And we are ever thankful for his merciful act.

My only constructive pieces of criticism would be to lay off the tanning and vamoose those too-big, too-gaudy hoops.

Otherwise, I think we have ourselves a seriously promising Spears trade-up.