How many cows for Nicole?

It's not often that I have the opportunity to ask some really cynical questions - but today appears to be the exception.

When human beings started to domesticate and herd animals instead of hunting them, a custom seems to have appeared that was unique to that time - the so called "bride price".

For the privilege of gaining a woman as a wife - the "gaining" family would actually pay the "losing" family for the loss of this valuable "asset".

Women were defined as "assets", in those days, valuable assets; that had the children, looked after the house, cooked, cleaned, washed, made the clothes, grew the vegetables and were of course great companions as well.

In more recent times, it was common to have the "losing" family actually have to find some goods to go along with the woman so that the 'gaining' family would take the woman (someone whose value seems to have slipped by that time) off their hands. This was usually referred to as a "Dowry"

In any event, the point of this story is that women have, it seems, over the centuries, always had a 'price.'

Like the stock-market, this price has fluctuated and has waxed and waned.

The news from today of course is that a swimming costume, belonging to Australian film star Nicole Kidman was sold at auction for enough to buy more than nine cows for the poor in India.

Apparently Kidman, a keen swimmer, forgot the suit at a pool she had reserved for her personal use in the south-western town of Vaenersborg during a 2002 stay in Sweden to shoot Lars von Trier's "Dogville".

Pool staff found it and handed it over to a local radio station.

Mr Zlatko Nedanovski, 32 then bought the swimsuit for 5,500 kronor and promptly put it on display at his second hand store.

Mr Nedanovski says bids for the swimsuit had come from all over the world, but it finally went to 49-year-old Bengt Olsen from Sweden's film town Trollheattan, just south of Vaenersborg for 16,200 kronor ($3,270) which is more than Mr Nedanovski said he had hoped to raise to buy five cows, or around 9,000 kronor, as part of a project run by the Swedish aid organisation Erikshjaelpen.

Now here is where my cynical mind asks the next question:-

"If the swimsuit WITHOUT Nicole in it currently worth 16,200 kronor (more than the price of nine cows) nearly a 300% increase in the price paid for it by Mr Nedanovski in 2002 then how many cows will you be able to buy with the suit in five years time?

More to the point what's Nicole worth? With or without the suit?

The world's an interesting place!