Bewildered By A Blank Belly Button

The fixation people have about what is normal is a powerful framework that often generates bewilderment when confronted with a deviation from an accepted standard. The absence of something as minor as a belly button could trigger wild speculations in an attempt to find a suitable explanation that would placate their mindsets; or satisfy their mischievous and derisive nature.

This was the furor that greeted Czech Supermodel Karolina Kurkova when she climbed the catwalk to model the underwear line of Victoria's Secret. Her non-existent belly button puzzled the audience and sent the press into a frenzy of conjecture that prompted the model's agent to declare that she's not an alien. Questions like "How was she fed when she was in the womb without an umbilical cord"? "Was she a test tube baby fed intravenously"? " Did she have it erased because it was unsightly"? Or, "Is her belly button located somewhere else that remains unseen even when wearing only undergarments"? "Isn't that freakish"?

Scientific explanations have been put forward about the phenemenon of the missing belly button or navel. One speaks of a weakness in the abdominal wall after developing a small hernia, which requires removal; or as part of a tummy tuck procedure. Ms. Kurkova herself has not offered any explanation why her abdomen is smooth and without any trace of where an umbilical cord used to be. Some argue that a belly button coud be made surgically to complete the body structure, as if one would be an incomplete individual without it. Others say it has much lesser sex appeal, elevating the belly button to the stature of a sex organ when it is merely the severed skin from which chewed food passed through direct to the infant's stomach.

Other people's notions of what should and what must be present need not be dictated upon those who choose to be without these "natural" body elements. Besides, she's modeling outer wear and undergarments, and there's no such thing as a garment for the belly button, unless they begin to invent one. Kurkova is withinn her rights not to reveal any reason for its absence, even if she happened to swallow her navel at a point in her life when she was hungry and without means.

The missing navel has not diminished her career one bit, but has even enhanced it. It is not far fetched to expect other models to follow suit. At the rate she's earning from her modeling career, around 2 million pounds a year, she could easily have a navel or two crafted if she wants to, or even fill her entire body with belly buttons for those who are interested in "pressing her right buttons".

In the lull between the much awaited end to the Bush Administration and the anticipation of the Barack Obama inauguration, the American press is trying to entertain itself with inanities that measure the depth of their mental abilities.

Haaarrrrwwwwk...Twoooooooph...Ting!