My wife is in charge of shampoo in our house. I just use whatever she chooses. Today, I noticed that we currently are using a brand that labels its shampoo, “Bodifying Shampoo.” I am over 40 and need reading glasses which I do not wear in the shower. I put them on after I got out of the shower and double checked; indeed we are using “bodifying shampoo” in our house.
I like a new word as much as the next person but, “Bodifying?” I wonder what Descartes would have made of it. In fact, imagine what metaphysics could do with that word. “We are bodified manifestations of energy.” “Our souls are temporarily bodified while we have bodies.” And, since this is a photography blog, “Portraits are two dimensional representations of bodified humans.”
Maybe a better use of it would be for tattooing and other body modifications. One would go to a “Bodifying” parlour to have one’s hair colored or a new tattoo applied.
I do my best thinking in the shower. I allow my mind to “free-range,” just like our chickens. “Bodifying” led to a rumination on bodies and ageing which led directly to one of my favorite poems. This poem has a bad reputation as a seduction poem. I may even have used it for this purpose myself, back when I studied young women for reasons other than photographing them. But it is far more than that. It is a rumination on time, on mortality, on beauty. The word “bodifying” is missing from the poem. No one had thought of it yet.
TO HIS COY MISTRESS
Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long Love’s Day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges side 5
Should’st Rubies find: I by the Tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should if you please refuse
Till the Conversion of the Jews. 10
My vegetable Love should grow
Vaster then Empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast: 15
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An Age at least to every part,
And the last Age should show your Heart.
For Lady you deserve this State;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged Chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast Eternity.
There, thy Beauty shall no more be found; 25
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My echoing Song: then Worms shall try
That long preserv’d Virginity:
And your quaint Honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my Lust. 30
The Grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hew
Sits on thy skin like morning [dew]
And while thy willing Soul transpires 35
At every pore with instant Fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our Time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt pow’r. 40
Let us roll all our Strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one Ball:
And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the Iron gates of Life.
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun 45
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
That’s Edward Steichen’s famous portrait of Greta Garbo taken back when she was bodified.









