Friday night, I was among more than a hundred fortunate Nevadans to get a look at director Darryl Roberts’ magnum opus, “America the Beautiful.”

Roberts himself attended the event at the University of Nevada Joe Crowley Student Union.

He explains in the film that his original concept changed as production progressed. He began exploring the causes of our obsession with how people look, the nation’s fixation with the superficial and skin deep.

He ended up the Michael Moore of the cosmetics industry, and that’s about the highest compliment I can pay.

“Michael Moore rocks,” Roberts said after the screening.

He follows the very short career of Gerren, a six-foot tall, size-four African-American girl who becomes an adult fashion supermodel at age 12 and is too old and “obese” to work by 14. (The definition of obese in this context means the face of the rail-thin waif became rounder and no longer bony as she grew up. She became a star volleyball player when she returned to high school.)

Roberts shows some of the ghastly results of plastic surgery that chop shop docs don’t use on their TV commercials.

Director Darryl even finds the smoking gun: Life is a bitch and the bitch is television. He interviews a researcher who studied the impacts of TV on a tubeless society. The laboratory was provided when the island nation of Fiji got television service a few years back.

Prior to TV, the idea of boniness as beautiful was unknown to their culture. Within three years, eating disorders had reared their ugly heads as islanders began to emulate what they saw on television.

Rather than just documenting our national mental illness, Roberts offers two solutions. The first: militant college coeds vs. cosmetics industry.

“I’m 47 and through them I can feel 18 again,” Roberts says.

He is impressed with young ladies he has met all over the country who want to do something, so he’s enlisting them in Roberts’ Raiders. Their goal is to get major cosmetics manufacturers to remove cancer-causing and allergy-triggering chemicals from their products.

Europe has already banned them, but the industry has successfully lobbied Congress and state legislatures to allow the nefarious ingredients.

Needless to say, Revlon is really pissed off at Darryl Roberts. I’m sure they turn redder as he criss-crosses the country picking up new awards on what seems a monthly basis.

He even scored a major coup just by something he said on CNN about MTV. The pop music network started a series exploiting young women, a more vicious version of “The Biggest Loser.” Roberts complained about it on a CNN interview. Within three days, MTV received more than 10,000 complaints from angry women and canceled the series.

Fighting television with television works — his second solution. I’ve volunteered to help start a division of Roberts’ Raiders here and I have the perfect chairperson: Darlene Jespersen, the former Harrah’s-Reno bartender fired for her refusal to wear makeup.

Darlene’s wrongful termination lawsuit made worldwide news and earned her a featured part in Roberts’ documentary along with former Miss Nevada (and new mother) Theresa Benitez-Thompson. (Darryl interviewed the three of us on the same day four years ago, but my radio face rightly ended up on the cyber-cutting room floor.)

Jespersen was fired by Harrah’s in 2000 for refusing to conform to a new appearance code that mandated a double standard for men and women. The program required all females to wear heavy makeup and to never change or show signs of age. I was proud to escort the courageous Ms. Jespersen to the Friday showing.

My e-mail bulletin about the film brought a quick response from the lead organizer for a major Nevada union who wants to use it in training classes for both organizers and frontline employees. A DVD will be available this fall.

Venerable reviewer Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it “a film that might rescue the lives of some girls ages 12 and up.”

The film includes interviews with Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore, actresses Mena Suvari, Aisha Tyler and Paris Hilton, singers Tisha Campbell and Jessica Simpson and comedian Martin Short, all commenting on America’s fixation with the superficial and skin deep.

Jespersen had been a model employee at Harrah’s for 21 years when she objected to being treated differently from male workers.

Once a female worker was given a makeover by a Harrah’s image consultant, she was photographed and required to look exactly like that photo for the rest of her life or be fired. Work clothes sizes could only be altered for women who had boob jobs.

Adding insult to surgery, Harrah’s “Personal Best Program” required employees to “be able to tolerate second-hand smoke.”

At the time, Culinary Union Local 226 secretary-treasurer D. Taylor called Harrah’s new rules “tantamount to saying working mothers need not apply.”

Jespersen’s “Personal Best” photos (sans makeup) and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals 7-4 decision denying Jespersen her day in court are posted at NevadaLabor.com. Despite being shut out of the legal system, Jespersen’s case made new law, which will help future victims of discrimination.

She currently works in Reno outside of the gambling industry. A complete history of the case will be linked to the Web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com.

I have invited Darlene to speak at northern Nevada’s annual César Chávez celebration at Circus Circus-Reno on March 31, the legendary union leader’s birthday. She will join Daryl Bodick, organizer of the recent march of the unemployed. Watch NevadaLabor.com for more details, ticket and sponsorship information.

In memoriam

Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the untimely death of Nevada Alliance for Workers’ Rights founder Tom Stoneburner. Stoney was one of Darlene Jespersen’s earliest and strongest supporters. Rest in peace, old warrior. Your fight continues.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano is a 40-year Nevadan, political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and editor of NevadaLabor.com. He hosts live news and talk (682-4144) Monday through Friday, 2 to 4 p.m. on Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter digital channels 16 and 216, streaming at Barbwire.TV. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.