Price Tag
by Rebecca Rivera
WARNING
The following is hardly scientifically accurate
&
These numbers were put together by somebody who isn’t a mathematician
END WARNING
~~~
Leonarda Cianciulli owned a small shop in the colorful Italian city of Emilia Romagna Correggio. In the mornings, the sun would reflect brilliant oranges, yellows and reds off the houses that lined the cobblestone streets. Cianciulli was a mother of four, popular among her neighbors, best known for her soaps and her cakes.
Her victims were Faustina Setti, Francesca Soavi, and Virginia Cacioppo. Their bodies were sold for 30,000 lire, 3,000 lire, and 50,000 lire.
Standing at her trial, calm and haughty, she stated with pride, “After a long time on the boil I was able to make some most acceptable creamy soap. I gave bars to neighbours and acquaintances. The cakes, too, were better: that woman (Virginia) was really sweet.”
I am disgusted… but also intrigued. Let's face it; I’m very intrigued. It isn’t the method of turning flesh into soap that intrigues me (though I imagine it’s a very scientific process), and it isn’t the psychology behind why anyone would be compelled to turn people into soap in the first place; it isn’t even the fact that people didn’t notice or suspect anything was wrong with Cianciulli’s goods.
What intrigues me is the profit.
50,000 lire is about $28.69. It was 1940 when Cianciulli sold her bars, so if I account for inflation then it’s roughly $502.36.
If I were turned into soap my body would be worth, at most, $502.36.
But Francesca’s body had been sold for only 3,000 lire.
I could be equally unlucky. I could be worth as little as $30.14.
I decide to conduct research; how much is my body really worth?
My friend Tessa gasps out, shrieking her speech of self-love and goodness, “You can’t place a number on-”
“Yeah yeah yeah, but if you had to place a numerical price on my body, how much would it be worth?”
“Five billion,” she responds without hesitation.
My roommate Hannah has been assessing me carefully through squinted eyes. “I’d say just under seven thousand, so six thousand nine hundred ninety-nine.” I appreciate the more realistic number, but still... I don’t think they’re taking this seriously. I need them to take this seriously.
In the U.S. it’s illegal to sell your body parts. It’s also illegal to murder, but, you know... it tends to happen anyways.
Illegal organ trades and organ trafficking are hard to pinpoint. There are too many hospitals and gangs and third-party organ brokers. There are even individuals who choose to sell their organs. Why would anyone want to cut themselves open and sell their own parts?
According to an article on Wired.com, a liver is worth $157,000. A kidney is even more at $262,000 (and I have two of those!). A pint of blood is $337 and skin is $10 per square inch.
If I cut myself up and sold myself in all my separate squishy pieces, my body would be worth up to $45 million.
A much better investment than soap.
Untitled by Andrew Lackland
Getting pregnant is generally free, but it wasn’t for my parents.
My mother was thirty-eight and my father was forty-one when they decided they wanted children. By then it was proving to be incredibly difficult. They had to turn to science for help.
Intrauterine insemination costs around $500 per attempt.
My parents tried this a handful of times to no avail.
In-vitro fertilization costs about $15,000 per attempt. They tried this three times until my mother finally got pregnant with my brother and me.
My father tells me this story over the phone. He assures me that I was worth the almost $50,000 he had to spend to bring me into existence.
I ask my neighbor Frits what worth he’d assign to my body. Asking him is a little harder due to the fact that I’ve harbored the slightest bit of a crush on him ever since he first muttered an absentminded “hello” while passing me in the hallway. You know how those things go.
“Root three,” he responds in a low, droning voice. He doesn’t look at me when he says it, but that’s usually how he acts around me.
“Root three?” I ask, unsure if I heard him right.
“Yeah- square root of three. Cause that question is irrational.” He goes back to his room and shuts the door. I wish he’d given me a real answer; I want to know what he really thinks.
Joe Metheny sold BBQ burgers at an open-pit beef stand on the side of the road near Baltimore. He had seven unknown victims: three men, four women. They were the secret ingredient in his burgers.
The average quarter-pound burger costs $8.34.
The last time I weighed myself I was 144 pounds.
Google doesn’t have any statistics on the amount of edible meat you can get from a human body, so I decide to work under the presumption that humans are like cows.
About 43% of the cow's weight turns into edible meat (steaks, roasts, ground beef, etc.). Assuming I were a cow, that means I would produce 61.92 pounds of edible meat. Probably less. Human flesh is very fatty.
Taking this into account, if I were to be ground up and sold as burgers, my body would be worth around $2,065.65.
Still better than the soap.
In the U.S., the average cost per hour for a prostitute is $237.
To each potential customer that eyes me up and down, my body would be worth $237.
It’s a Thursday night and I’m sitting with some friends. I’m trying to get work done while they play some zombie video game. There’s a lot of screaming. I wait for a lull and ask my question, hoping to get some real answers.
“I’d rather not talk about this,” David says meekly from the other side of the couch.
“I’d pay a million dollars!” Tony exclaims.
I jot down the number absentmindedly and turn to Beth, who is sitting right beside me and therefore more easily accosted. “Come on. If you had to pick a number- any number.”
She won’t look me in the eye. “I-I don’t know. I’m not good at finances,” she mumbles uncomfortably.
The others pay no mind to me; I guess they’re more involved with the videogame. Why don’t they want to answer? It’s just a number! How hard is it to come up with a number?
Cadaver for sale! How much $$$$$$ is your body worth?
“I'm afraid you're dead,” the website tells me. “The following survey will help you crunch the numbers to determine your cumulative market value. Results are based primarily on whether you treated your body like a temple or a trailer and how many MDs will scalpel joust for the honor of dissecting your remains.”
Well… this doesn’t seem scientifically accurate in the slightest.
Choose your gender to begin. Female.
How often do you smoke? Never.
Choose the option that best describes your diet: Average diet, mixture of good and bad.
How often do you drink alcohol? I don’t drink.
Do you have any rare medical disorders, such as elephantitis? No.
Are you albino? No.
Have you ever had your appendix removed? No.
How is your vision? Less than perfect vision.
How frequently do you take pain relievers? Once a month.
How much exposure do you have to the sun? Some - occasional outside tanning.
Are you diabetic? No.
“Congratulations! Your cadaver is worth $3,720!”
$3,720? It seems like a small amount. But still, it’s better than the soap.
I text my mother and ask her how much of a reward she’d put out for me if I were kidnapped.
She responds with, “??????????????????”
“Just go with it,” I tell her, “First number that pops into your head.”
To my mother, my body is worth $500,000.
My father offers no price for my body. Instead, like the Mel Gibson movie Ransom, he offers $100,000 for each of my kidnappers, dead or alive.
Self Portrait by Leah Byck
Karl Denke lived in Ziebice, Poland, in the early 1900s. He was a religious man; played organ at the local church, carried crosses for funerals, housed homeless migrants. He had a small shop where he sold leather suspenders, belts, and shoelaces made from the skin of those migrants; upwards of 40 died at his hands, all unknown.
The average belt is 45 inches long and 1.25 inches wide. The average suspender strap is 43.3 - 47.2 inches long and 1.5 inches wide. The average shoelace is 54 inches long and 0.5 inches wide.
As I learned from investigating the black market, the average human being has about 3,168 square inches of skin. Theoretically I could make 56 belts, 23 suspenders or 58 shoelaces.
At Walmart a leather belt costs $18.66, a pair of leather suspenders costs $27.95, and a pair of leather shoelaces costs $11.99.
As various leather goods, my body would be worth $1,044.96, $642.85, or $695.42.
“Well, it depends,” Nick says, twirling a fork in his fingers as he waits for his spicy ramen to finish cooking, “Cause your organs are worth far more than, like, sex.”
“Yeah, no, I know- just choose a number. First thing you think of.”
Emily smirks at me over her pizza, giggling a little, “Ten cents.”
“Cool, cool.” I scribble her answer in my notebook. “What about you Nick?”
“Five hundred dollars,” he responds as he takes his ramen from the microwave, “But if it was for sex or something then probably like- a quarter and an apple.”
Emily chokes on her pizza and I hold back a laugh, “Alright, that’s fair.” At least Nick gave me a concrete answer; I was tired of being told I was priceless. Everything has a price.
The U.S. government spends various amounts of money to protect its citizens through various government regulations. Economists study these regulations in order to find out the implicit cost per life saved.
Spending money to keep a life (and therefore a body) safe shows how much worth is put into that body.
To the U.S. government, my body would be worth anywhere between $100,000 - upwards of $1 billion.
But I’m lucky, living in America.
Many people in the U.S. believe that the life of a child from a third world country can be saved with only $10. Period.
I used to think dying was free, but apparently nothing is free and funerals are expensive.
To bury my body immediately, no viewing or visitation, would cost between $2,000 - $10,000.
To wash and display it with care and hold a traditional funeral service would cost somewhere between $6,000 - $15,000 on average. Depending on the quality and number of services it could increase to $35,000.
If my family wanted to cremate my body after the funeral instead of burying it, it would cost between $2,000 - $9,000. It would be cheapest to cremate my body on the spot, no viewing, no funeral; only $1,000 - $2,500.
It’s more expensive to see the body before burial or cremation.
It’s more expensive to keep the body intact than to turn it into ashes.
In the end, it’ll all depend on what my surviving kin will believe my body to be worth.
My freshman year of college I decided to join a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show. At Rocky we were empowering our bodies through their exposition; at the same time, we were using this exposition to sell tickets. Rows of girls dancing in fishnets and corsets and see-through bras; pasties and sequins and red lips galore; all for $5!
I figure asking the other girls my question won’t go well; they’ll probably give me the same old spiel about how my body can’t possibly be given a numerical worth. But I ask anyway.
“A price? But- there’s no price- I can’t-”
“But if you had to.”
“Are we doing goats or cash?”
“Cash.”
“Isn’t that just prostitution?”
“Maybe.”
“A million!”
“I don’t know- it’s not a real number.”
“What’s your physical activity like?”
“Average.”
“What’s your height?”
“Ah, average? Like, five-seven. Roughly.”
“Hmmm. Seven hundred.”
“Um… a billion!”
“I don’t know! It’s hard to put a price on a human being, it feels like slavery!”
“I know, I know, but if you had to.”
“I don’t know! I can’t- I just can’t.”
As I suspected, most of them brush off the question without giving it much thought. None of them ask me how much I think I’m worth.
This is a good thing.
If they had, I would’ve had to admit I didn’t know either.