Today I read about a group of French workers who, in an attempt to raise money and gain attention to keep their jobs at a heating factory, decided to pose nude in a calendar. In this tough economy, with many stories of people employing all kinds of measures to make ends meet, up to even selling their own kidney, you might just look at this story from Chaffoteaux factory as only another desperate extreme. In most cases, society will tell us that selling the body is equal to cheapening the body. This contrasts with how selling of our time, brainpower and freedom is both expected and respected. We place a different standard of value on our physical being then on the part of us that thinks and feels.

Whether you think this is right or not, the problem arises in a situation where you’ve lost a job and the value of your work is assessed at zero. Most people will feel essentially worthless when the job skills they’ve banked on are no longer bringing pay. Above and beyond the old saying “at least you have your health” we can feel a great sense of worth and balance by finding creative ways to mine the value in our bodies. Don’t just take my word for it, for more proof just consider the most looked up to members of our society, the star athletes and models.

We’re all made of about $1’s worth of minerals like chlorine, sodium, oxygen etc. The millions upon millions of ways these materials are combined gives us the vast array of body types that can be seen in the human species. While there are some opportunities to capitalize on combinations of these minerals that results in beauty or strength, most of our bodily attributes are underutilized, which often leaves their value overlooked. When the job market makes us feel like we’re not worth so much, doesn’t it make sense to mine value, namely entertainment value, from our bodies?  Posing nude is one thing, but you need only go so far as to make a youtube video of yourself touching your tongue to your nose, maybe enter a hotdog eating contest or try to break a Guinness book record for the fastest run over 100 meters of ice (there’s a record for that.) Presenting your body in a way that makes use of its unique qualities is a creative investment that can give a balancing boost to your sense of self worth. And that’s Killin’ It!