Memories from the Forgetful

"Let's just call a peach a peach"?
I had never heard this expression before 10 or so days ago. I knew what it meant, but thought it was funny, because who would call a peach anything but a peach? Is this a common expression? I need to know. The phrase comes from my dear fiend Joanna. Joanna has other catchphrases like, "It's not a big of a deal." So as you cn see I don't trust her 100% in this arena.
I imagine the phrase would go something like this, "Let's just call it what it is." or "Let's just call poop, a poop. It is what it is." or "Let's call a roach a roach." Sometimes people try to make bad/gross things not so bad/gross by calling them a different name.
This is the real reason for this post.

Ack!!!! One of these crawled up my pants while we were on the pier yesterday evening. My husband called it a palmetto bug, my eyes called it a cockroach. I felt some relief, because I thought... "Hey it's just a palmetto bug, nothing too bad." Of course I get back to the beach house and type "palmetto bug" into the google search bar and lo and behold... IT'S A ROACH!!!! UGHHH. So to my dear husband "Let's just call a roach a roach." I'm not falling for that palmetto bug thing again.