Certainly, putting on "Perky in Pink" or "Baby Got Brown" (your two color choices) seems less painful than twisting your nipples in tweezers or standing in your favorite club's walk-in cooler to make them stand at attention. The instructions say, "Simply place bodyperks nipple enhancers between your real nipples and your bra. Adjust nipples accordingly." Perhaps for an extra $100, bodyperks could send a trained, franchised nipple adjuster to customize the job. "See the difference! Feel confident!" says the come-on on the bodyperks box. "Dishwasher safe!" Yeah, let's see how your nipples survive a run through the Sani Rinse cycle!

To their credit, the founders of bodyperks, two Minnesota women, seem to acknowledge that this is a bit of a goof, albeit an increasingly profitable one. According to their telling, they got the idea after a friend jokingly put hotel shampoo caps under her bra during a trip to Las Vegas. They decided to go out with them on, and men reacted, of course, like slobbering dogs. Given that the company is based in freezing Minnesota, the concept of permanently erect nipples wasn't too much of a stretch.

bodyperks has a message board, where the community of silicone-nipple-ites can share their thoughts. Many, of course, believe bodyperks to rank up there with raising Lazarus from the dead as a miracle. "I love these erect nipples!" gushes one woman. "When I am wearing them, I get so many more long, thoughtful stares at my chest." Thoughtful. I like that. Staring at breasts has never sounded so intellectual.

As for the question, aren't men going to notice if you go have sex with them and these things come falling off like silicone manhole covers? Not that you need the bodyperks message board to tell you this, but of course men won't notice. They're gettin' some! Even if the bodyperks don't fall off, men will only vaguely think how odd it is that these nipples taste like a balloon before moving on.

According to the board, anyone who hates bodyperks is obviously some sort of hairy-legged man-hater who has yet to unlearn the canard that women should be able to get by only on their brainpower. Plus (I'm just summarizing here,) the critics tend to be at late college-age, so they'll change their minds about going out of their way to be attractive when they get out into the real world and, day by day, hear the sounds of good, available men all around them replaced by chirping crickets.

And if I may not be a smart-ass for a moment, there appear to be a number of women with mastectomies who find bodyperks useful after reconstructive surgery or along with a prosthesis.

O.K., now back to being a smart-ass. I decided I could stand it no more — I had to buy a pair. I went to the Nordstrom in downtown Chicago just in time, because there was only one pair left (Pretty in Pink.) I bought my pair just before Halloween, and the Nordstrom attendant, in making conversation to gauge what kind of a perv I was, mentioned that many women bought them for costumes. Apparently, many women in Chicago dressed up as a pair of high beams this year.

Through the pictures on the bodyperks website — and my experience as a teenager ofhaving to jump in the pool to calm myself down whenever a female, any female, in a slightly wet swimsuit walked by — I knew that the product would work for women, and would attract men's attention. What I wanted to know was, how would it be for guys?

My plan was to put on the set of bodyperks and go out to see if women, or gay men, would get excited or just laugh their heads off. Except that, despite what some men say on the bodyperks message board about how good it feels to have plastic things stuck to their nipples, I couldn't even get the damn things on. Maybe the comparative curves in a man's and woman's nipples are too different, or perhaps mine are just insufficient. But the bodyperks kept falling off like I was trying to attach a photo to a wall without putting it on a hook. I was resigned to my fate. So, I took out a pair of tweezers and started twisting.

— Bob Cook (bobc@flakmag.com)