Last night I had trouble finding "body persons" for anyone except Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that such entities are supposed to be ubiquitous in the um, "industry."

So I thought I'd look again.

Using the phrase "my body person," the first hit was typical, and it involved a person who works on customers' bodies:

When Maria Turretto-Shropshire bought Naturals back in 1990 it was a haphazard mix of employees, renters and commissioned stylists.

She switched the focus to the customer by making all of her workers hourly employees and creating a mandatory monthly training program to ensure that all of her staff was up to date on techniques and customer service, said Naturals General Manager Cindi Torres.

"Nobody's just sitting around in the back," said Torres. "If my body person isn't busy, she'll come out and she'll start doing a shoulder massage for someone getting a manicure or she'll come out and she'll rub people's feet."

The spa has diversified, too, carrying gift items, custom cosmetic lines by Hollister-based Acqua Cures, and offering everything from pedicures to hairstyling, massages to microdermabrasion.

My body person is a fender bender, not a gender bender!

Such a person used to be called a "body man." (I was almost afraid to Google "body man" as I don't want to get mired in X-rated popups, but I did, and I got over 20,000 hits, most appearing to involve body and fender type repair.)

There are sixteen hits for "his body person," mostly involving sex and/or religion, and none seem to involve politics. Considering that there are a lot of men in the United States Senate, and the fact that "body person" is said to be "Senate parlance," what gives here?

Googling "her body person" yields similar sex and religion results, but they're now hopelessly contaminated by Hillary's "body person." (Like it or not "her" seems to be becoming synonymous with "Hillary" or "Hillary's.")

In any event, I cannot find another "body person" anywhere who works according to the so called industry standard and has that title.

Googling the phrase "body person wanted" came up with employment listings for jobs in auto body shops. (I suspect they're not allowed to use the phrase "body man" lest they invite discrimination litigation.)

Either I am missing something, or something is wrong with the term we have been given as "industry speak," because its only industrial usage seems to be in the automotive and Hillary repair industries.

And I do mean given. I did not make up the ridiculous phrase "body person," and I think it looks ridiculous. I am beginning to suspect its current usage is of recently manufacture.

Might be a good name for a business, though. But that brings up a pet peeve, which is the contamination (even destruction) of perfectly good words by their use in commerce. At the shopping center the other day, I saw a store with the word "THEORY" on it. Now, that's fine. They can use whatever word they want for what appears to be a clothing store. (I didn't go in.) But people are greedy by nature, and the human tendency is to imagine you own what you use. So they have theory.com, and no doubt if they succeed, the longer they're in business the more likely they'll think that "theory" is their word. It's annoying as hell, but how do we protect words?

How would we stop the body person snatchers?

After all, the term is already IN VOGUE.

And Vogue is more than vaguely theoretical.

Things could be worse, though. At least we don't live in the kind of country where our leaders use body person doubles....

(Actually, the correct term seems to be "political decoy" but that's a completely different subject. In this country we still have real leaders, right? At least in theory....)

UPDATE: Jim Miller links this post and in turn links a New York Times piece which refers to John Kerry's "body man":

''There are not many staff members who go snowboarding with the principal,'' David Morehouse, a senior adviser, said, referring to Mr. Kerry's recent ski vacation in Idaho, on which Mr. Nicholson accompanied him. ''John Kerry wanted Marvin to go snowboarding with him.''

Every modern presidential candidate has a factotum, or ''body man,'' typically an ambitious Washington junkie, overqualified to schlep bags but eager to shake high-powered hands.

A factotum is a general servant or a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities. The word derives from the Latin command (imperative construction) fac totum ("do/make everything").

But body person?

The word almost seems too contrived -- as if someone wants to get the GOP guys to deny having them!