The Reluctant Whore

The prominent smile of “Ugly Betty” star, America Ferrera has been insured by a tooth product company at Lloyds of London for ten million bucks and she’s apparently flattered. She’s flattered because that’s what her smile is worth to them and they don’t want to have to suffer the massive loss they’d suffer if she had her teeth smashed in with a hammer or if she took to a heavy regimen of coffee, cigarettes and red wine. How inconvenient that would be and how reassured they must now be that no matter what happens to her, they’ll be well taken care of.

There’s no better way of really getting down to the gritty, soul confronting reality of what makes up the bulk of why a celebrity is famous than seen what they decided to insure. While America Ferrera, from all accounts appears to have been insured by a third party for their benefit, other stars like Dolly Parton have insured body parts in case they lose them. Dolly Parton, for example, gets over half a million bucks if her breasts…who knows…deflate? Who cares - just take care of it ahead of time.

Cause at the end of the day, there’s an awful lot of appeal wrapped up not SO much in the creative work they actually do, but, on a really grunt level – in a physical attribute. Like Jessica Simpson or Pam Anderson. Anna Kournikova was never THAT great at tennis but she sure got a lot of attention because of her breasts. That's why it's not shocking that she insured them, rather than say her tennis elbow for 2 million bucks.

It really must be confronting to have to face the reality that your appeal, when you get right down to it, boils down to an eyelash or a nipple and – commercially speaking – sometimes not much else. It's interesting with people like David Hasselhoff though. Clearly, he couldn't really boil his appeal down to one specific thing to insure. It certainly couldn't have just been his alluring physique or his critically acclaimed work over the years. Maybe that's why he drank so much. It was all the stress of wondering what ONE part of him his appeal was anchored in. Too many choices. [source]