Body/Shop

It’s hard to say which of our outer casings we’re more obsessed with – our clothes or our bodies. We can easily define ourselves with our sartorial choices and go from conservative to wild with one small step into a changing room. Clothes are wonderfully temporary, and are our social armor, disguising or revealing our real selves.

We can reinvent ourselves through our clothes,but even with faithful pilgrimages to the gym, hairdresser or plastic surgeon, we’re pretty much stuck with the body we’re dealt.

We’ve all spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about our bodies, watching the changes in happy fascination as we leave childhood, smug satisfaction in our youth, and resignation in our later years. 

Haven’t we all at some time longed for better packaging or wished we could trade in some parts for better ones? 

Perhaps there could be some sort of universal swap meet. It would have a section for legs, another for chins, and so forth.  I’d be perfectly willing to exchange the waves I’ve never conquered for someone else’s more predictable hair. And I could definitely accommodate the person out there who’s always dreamed of being more stable in a high wind (a commentator on the Weather Channel?) and is therefore longing for size ten feet. Perhaps I could market my freckles on the premise that when they morph into age spots, no one’s the wiser.

What would you be willing to trade? What do you have that could be of value to someone else and yet still be so expendable that you’d be willing to part with it?