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Saturday, Nov 28, 2009
Smoking, birth control, weight loss, hangovers -- you name the ailment, there's probably a flesh-colored adhesive to fix it.
Jan 13, 2005 | I have seen the future of our species and it is ... a patch. Specifically, a gigantic, skin-toned, custom-fitted patch -- part body bag, part Band-Aid -- that covers every square centimeter of our skin. Coating us mummylike, the Great Patch secretes various salves and solutions concocted to cure the great disease of being a living, breathing human. Smoking, birth control, depression, drug addiction, infertility, self-esteem issues, poor eyesight, acne, gastrointestinal troubles, acute anxiety, mild anxiety, anxiety about the potential of anxiety, sore throats, binge eating, binge dieting, claustrophobia, xenophobia, agoraphobia, annoying in-laws, an itch in the middle of your back that you can't quite reach -- you name it and the Patch will go to work, solving, dissolving, perpetually curing. And when Patch scholars look back (through the teeny eyeholes in their Patches), trying to pinpoint when exactly we became a Patch nation, they will look to today, to our present society, as the tipping point, the time when the great shift began.
I'm almost being serious here.
A few years ago there was only the nicotine patch for smokers trying to quit, a goofy little temporary tattoo that spiked your blood flow with a hit of nicotine to get you through the day tremor-free. Remember that? You kept it there for a bit as you kicked cigarettes, then you kicked the patch as well, because the patch was supposed to be temporary. The patch was necessary, sure; but ultimately it was the silly part, the part that ripped a few of your arm hairs out of their poor follicles, the part you wanted to forget as soon as possible. And yet ... as it happened, this was the early onset of national patch fever, the moment when drug companies and dubious holistic businesses alike became consumed, mad scientist-like, by a vision: What if we could design a patch for ... [cue diabolic laughter] ... everything!
Now we have patches for birth control, for hormone replacement, for run-of-the-mill fevers. The other day I received an e-mail touting the new Sober X Hangover-Free Topical Patch, which allegedly nullifies a night of heavy drinking. In the wake of our cultural obsession with the Atkins diet, we've been introduced to a variety of patches, none of them FDA approved, purporting to help one lose weight by infusing one's blood flow with various shady, often "herbal" metabolism boosters like sea kelp, bladderwrack and Brazilian coco. There's the Diet Patch Original, the Natural Patch and the Slim Form Patch, which was the subject of a CBS News report, and boasts a Web site featuring a headless woman's taut, sand-covered, bikini-clad bottom, which is either an example of the ass the patch can give you "transdermally," or a way of saying that, hey, the thing is so discreet you can hide it in a skimpy bathing suit! I don't know. I don't want to know.
