Wrapped in Plastic

In an odd, Twin Peaks style story, the body of a porn star, "Taylor Summers," was found wrapped in plastic in Pennsylvania, and the photographer she reportedly went to visit has been arrested.

The details of the crime, and in fact the crime itself, are of no interest to me. It's awful that she got murdered, and I'm not going to pretend a sense of righteousness over pornography and those who choose it as a means of making money - that's their business. But, it can be a pretty scummy business, and has its risks, so the crime doesn't really come as much of a surprise.

What I find interesting is that the news stories covering it frequently refer to the "body" of the porn star - meaning, of course, the corpse, the thing that used to be a person but is now, at best, a dead person. This isn't any different than the way any other murder is reported; they make reference to "the body" all the time. But in this instance, there's an underlying sense of strangeness because of the way this person made her money - by selling her body, or at least using it, as an object of men's (and women's - I'm equal-opportunity) sexual fantasies. Now that she's dead, the vast majority of her former fans thinking about her "body" aren't doing so in a sexual way any more, but the news reporting the case still throws the term around freely.

Just one of those things that seems interesting to me at 7:20 in the morning. And hey, it's Thursday, and I'm determined to have a killer day at work.