While in Manhattan these past two weeks, people asked me over and over what’s Chicago like compared to New York City. For one thing, it’s much less image-conscious here.

Staying at a friend’s loft on Grand Street near Broadway in SoHo (just around the corner from the Mercer Hotel where hot-tempered Russell Crowe made international headlines for throwing a phone at the concierge) I couldn’t get over how many new clothing and accessories boutiques were in the immediate vicinity.

Of course, these stores sell items that are ultra-expensive but unique, aimed to set a person apart.

I actually had a friend at dinner one night tell me that if my book was going to sell, I needed to “create an image for myself.”

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A story in Tuesday’s New York Times reported that hip-hop artists, rappers and R&B stars are using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone in response to “increasing pressure on these performers to maintain perfect, even super-human physiques as a part of their overall image and brand.”

“ ‘The spectacle of hip-hop now is so much greater than it’s ever been,’ said Jeff Chang, author of the hip-hop history Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. “There’s always the battle aesthetic at work, this idea that you’re going to go up there and show that you’re badder than everybody else. It’s part of the swagger that hip-hop carries.”

Chang continued, “The marketing of the images is so key now to so many different bottom lines. Not just the music industry, but a whole range of consumer products. Your body is your brand and you’ve got to maintain that image. The machoness and braggadocio, that’s always been a part of hip-hop. What’s different at the highest levels of the money game in hip-hop is the size of it all.”

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Last night watching ABC’s 20/20, there was a segment about how women in China are spending oodles of money these days to whiten their faces so they’ll look more like the American models in magazines, etc.

What was unbelievable was seeing footage of women undergoing painful leg-lengthening procedures (using metal clamp stretching devices below the knee!) to try and gain a foot or two in height!

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Time Warner, Disney, Viacom and Sony are now all making big financial investments in online “hangouts” where teenagers go to “interact using videogame-like representations of themselves called avatars that they create and customize,” reports last weeks New York Post. “They then congregate in virtual public places where they can socialize, shop, play casual games, watch movies, and television, and listen to music.”

One particular site, Gaia Online, claims 3 million unique visitors each month who spend more than two hours on the site. Over half of Gaia’s revenue, according to the Post, is generated from users “purchasing virtual currency that can then be redeemed online for clothes, homes, cars and entertainment. It claims to generate over 100,000 transactions a day and over $1 million in digital commerce revenues per month.”

By the way, Gaia, as Wikipedia defines her, is a “primordial deity in the Ancient Greek pantheon and considered a Mother Goddess or Great Goddess.”

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I always remember my pastor’s mantra about the apostasy of the Christian church and what to expect from world culture in the years leading up to the Rapture: “Self will become the measure of everything.”

Also, I think about what I once wrote him saying post-9/11 in regards to people’s obsession with outward image:

“You aren’t your body,” warned Jordan, “but if I was the devil, though, I’d try to convince you you were so you’d pamper it, and you’d bathe it, and you’d clothe it, and you’d educate it, and you’d make investments for it, and you’d live for it, and you’d die and your soul wouldn’t be prepared for eternity and you’d go to hell.

“That’s what I’d do if I was the devil. I’d teach you you are your body. Do you know that’s what 99% of Americans believe tonight—that they are their body?”