DESPITE the news that more and more of us are having cosmetic surgery, if you don't have a face for fashion, you don't have a face for fashion and no amount of nipping, tucking or backstreet Botoxing is going to change the fact.
Likewise downloading that Couch Potato To 5K app and puffing round the nearest cinder track in a pair of joggers and a replica football top isn't going to give you a body like David Gandy. Instead, the only “definition” you'll get is the one the cheeky schoolkids offer as you pass: sad middle-aged guy trying to get a six-pack and V lines. And failing dismally.
But some things you can change more easily than bone structure, facial characteristics and the potato-shaped thing people see when they look at your body. Like your name. All you need do is fill out a deed poll form, send it off and before long those same fashion doors that would ordinarily slam in the face of [your name here] will spring open to admit, say, Rock McNulty or Incense McVitie or whatever other fashion handle you choose for the new you.
Having the right name is half the battle, you see. If you have one that's fashion-tastic enough to pass muster on a blog or a catwalk call sheet, it matters much less that you don't have a body like David Gandy, think front row is a BBC Radio 4 arts programme and wouldn't know a helixed hat from Felix the Cat. In fact it doesn't really matter at all.
Choose well, though. Pick names that smack of the exotic, something like Pekoe Lapsang Popocatepetl (that's two types of tea and a Mexican volcano. See what I did there?). Or take your two favourite fictional characters and add their names together: Darth Bond, for instance, or (with apologies to Charles Dickens and the creators of Oor Wullie) Soapy Twist.
Sadly you'll have to avoid Hansel McDonald. That's the name Owen Wilson's male supermodel character has in the, er, fragrantly-named Zoolander sequel Zoolander No 2, out this weekend. Instead, why not find inspiration in the real world, or what passes for it on Planet Fashion. Did you know, for instance, that there's a male model called Lucky Blue Smith, a 17-year-old Mormon from Spanish Fork, Utah? Among the other male models with unfeasibly cool and fashion-forward names, meanwhile, are Rusty Joiner, Marco Dapper and Sean O'Pry, who I think is the best of the lot because (a) he's been in a Madonna video and (b) his name comes within a whisper of being an anagram of Nose Spray. Way cool.
If you can't be bothered sticking a pin in an atlas and then opening Maude Grieve's 1931 work A Modern Herbal at random – how's Nasturtium Nagasaki for a name? – then use one of the internet's many Random Name Generators. I got Pantheras Zoticas when I ticked the Ancient Greek box, Aura Solardaddy when I plumped for the one marked Hippy and, because I'm going there on my holidays, I chose a Cornish one too: Jago Margh.
I think I'll take that one, and add a colour and a hyphen to boot. Jago Puce-Margh it is then! Next stop London, Paris, New York, Milan ...
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