Who is really qualified to determine the worth of an individual?
Recently I saw an interesting news report about a famous model who decided to get her legs insured. Her legs were a highly marketable asset, so it was important to her and her modeling agency to make sure they would be protected against any potential injury or harm.
Her right leg was insured for $600,000, but her left leg was “only” insured for $500,000. A hundred thousand dollars is a big difference for the same set of legs! The reason for the price difference was because her left leg had a tiny scar on it. The insurance assessors felt that because of the scar, the left leg was not as “valuable” as her other leg.
I’m not in the insurance business or the modeling world, but it struck me as odd that someone’s legs could be insured. It seemed even stranger to me that one leg was worth less than the other because of a tiny scar.
If just her set of legs alone are worth $1,100,000, I wonder how much they think the rest of her is worth. And then, the big question:
Who is really qualified to determine the worth of an individual? Obviously, this model has a healthy self-esteem to consider her legs so valuable—or at least her agent or business manager has provided this “value” for her in terms of dollars and cents.
What about you? If someone were to take out an insurance policy on you, how much would you be worth? Of course I’m using this illustration as a metaphor.