Touched by an Angel

We all seem to make mistakes, or so goes the saying anyway. Some of us make more than others. Of course by 'us', I mean me. There was the time I held hands wrong with my dream girl, Heather Wayman (things crashed after that). The time I told a kid in Chile he looked like Gollum - he cried (one of my poorer moments as a missionary). The day I laughed when my boss said her fiancé broke up with her (I thought she was joking - she wasn't). 

And then there was blog post number 57. 

In blog post 57 (The Depression Calculator) I made my case for why pro athletes deserve to be paid in millions while the rest of us normal humans get paid in crumbs. Among my words were the claims that professional jocks put their bodies on the line, perform under incredible pressure, and are simply irreplaceable due to being low in quantity. Wrote I of the final point, "Normal humans can be found anywhere, anytime. Superstar athletes - not so much."

Well, I was wrong about all that. Or at least most of that. Ok, I was half right, half wrong. I at least had the categories correct. People who sacrifice their body, perform under pressure, and are low in quantity (read 'rare or irreplaceable') do deserve to be paid huge amounts. Why wouldn't they? They do more, risk more, and are worth more than we the average people. But what I got wrong is the character in this story. It's not the pro athlete who best exemplifies those three attributes of money-makers.

It's the angels. Not the ones from Los Angeles, not the ones riding motorcycles, and definitely not the ones that guard people. I’m talking about the ones from Belarus, Florianopolis or any other exotic place you can think of (hint - they don't wear a lot of clothes).

Yup, you got it, the Victoria Secret kind.

When measured against the criteria applied to athletes, the Victoria Secret angels are found to be just as deserving of robust paychecks. They put their bodies on the line (vomiting daily can't be healthy for anyone), perform under immense pressure (imagine if you could be fired for gaining two pounds, or what it's like to negotiate a runway with 8 inch heels while being blinded by 1,000 lights), and they are definitely rare/irreplaceable. 

It's with regards to that final point that the angels actually trump pro athletes. While I initially assumed that sport stars were the rarest type of uber-talented person on the planet, it turns out that Victoria Secret employees are even harder to find. I thank the New York Times' Guy Trebay for bringing this aspect to my attention. In an article detailing the difficulties of finding said models, he points out that "those destined to be cast in a role of a Victoria's Secret angel are not drawn from the general population." Or in less friendly terms, normal humans need not apply. Edward Razek, CMO of Victoria Secret, provides an even harsher glimpse of reality by providing us numbers to consider. 

"What people don't realize is that (these girls) are rarer by far than superstar athletes. The number of people who can do this are probably under 100 in the world."

100 in the whole world!?! That might explain why I've never met one before. 

Let's do some math.

6.88 billion people in the world. 100 qualified women. That means these girls make up .000000014% of the world’s population. If these 100 were to be formed into a basketball league (an idea the WNBA might want to consider, by the way) they could fill 7 to 8 teams. If they were to form a football league (not to be confused with the already existent Lingerie Football League) they could make up two teams. Meanwhile the NBA currently has enough talent to field 30 teams; the NFL, 32 teams (31 if you don't count the Browns).

So while both the athletes and the angles risk their bodies and deal with major pressure, it's becoming clear which of these classes of superhuman is scarcer, and therefor more worthy of enormous earnings.

In fact it becomes a landslide in favor of the angles once Razek mentions that only 30 to 33 of these 100 women actually make the final cut of joining the Victoria Secret team.

How rare is it to become a Victoria Secret angel? Not even a hottie like Buffy can crack their prestigious ranks

In order to do so, one of these females fed off of nothing but "spinach, chard and kale," which seems to me a fate worse than anything sports stars have to endure to make it to the top. I don't even know what chard or  kale is. But if it's the only food you can eat to stay at 85 pounds, I imagine it's not that great. Most things associated with spinach aren't.

And so I apologize for my mistake. I said that sportsmen deserve to be paid in gold bars, but it's the angels who ought to be receiving bricks of cash. They are the humans that are truly unique, being so limited in number that they deserve colossal paychecks for doing what they do and being what they be.

 

And fortunately ... (drum-roll) ... these girls are very well compensated.

It takes LeBron James 5.1 minutes on the court to earn my annual salary. Wonder how long it takes Mrs. Bundchen?

The world's highest earning Victoria Secret model, Gisele Bundchen, beats Tiger, LeBron, Jeter, Manning and every other sports star for highest annual salary bringing in a sexy 25 million per year. The base salary of her NFL husband, Tom Brady? 7 million. Her sidekicks in seduction bring in markedly less, but still manage to massacre the average NFL, NBA, or MLB salary. Thus things are as they should be. Girls in underwear are earning more than sportsmen, not to mention less valuable persons like teachers, doctors, or those that defend our nation.

Thank goodness is all I can say. With the arrival of gay marriage, the death of the economy, and the disappearance of Bob Barker I was starting to get worried about this world.

At least one thing in it still makes sense.