A Modest Buoyancy Proposal

While others debate the legality and morality of LZR and other new-technology suits, I have a more practical idea. I say who needs new technology when you can just go organic! Work with what you already have – your body! As long as you’re not planning to have children some day, the sky’s the limit!

For starters, let’s think creatively about the issue of buoyancy. Many athletes have the buoyancy of granite because of their low body-fat percentage. (Some people might call that "too skinny," but I personally prefer the term "adipose-challenged.")

So what do you do if you’re adipose-challenged and you want to improve your buoyancy but the blueseventies are on back order until 2010? Lipo-augmentation!

Lipo-augmentation is the reverse of liposuction, but this way, you put the float right where you need it and there is not an official in the world who’s going to go poking around to see what’s real and what’s added once it’s on the inside of you. Heck, if I could inject a pull buoy under each one of my butt cheeks, I would!

Furthermore, plastic surgeons would probably be willing to perform the procedure dirt cheap because the floundering economy has decimated their cosmetic-surgery revenues.

But why stop there? How about a little help for the genealogically challenged? You know who we’re talking about here – those poor athletes who, through no fault of their own, are not descended from Helga, the grape-stomping pride of the Rhine Valley with size 15EEEE feet (and mitts to match)? How wrong would it be to surgically widen those feet and hands? Maybe even get a little webbed-skin action going there between the digits? FINA would be hard-pressed to prove it’s wrong when you figure all we’re doing here is evening the playing field.

And besides, as long as you crank out a few records first, and the Amalgamated Surgeons Guild drops a few contributions in the right coffers, by the time everyone starts howling in protest, we'll be able to say, "Oh, that train already left the station, it's too late to bring it back."

Finally, who really needs their head to swim? Hydro-dynamically speaking, a skull can be a major drag through the water, not to mention the problems it causes when an athlete thinks he or she should think.

And if the entire head can’t be removed, perhaps some of it can be harvested for lipo-augmentation elsewhere in the body! After all, the fat heads of the swimming world deserve a chance, too!