SHORT TAKES : Trading Places With Madonna

If Madonna could trade places with someone, living or dead, who would it be?

Marilyn Monroe? Nah. “She’d probably have an exercise video,” the sultry singer-actress said.

John F. Kennedy Jr.? Nope. But she’d like to be stranded with him if they were the only two people left on the planet.

Forget it. You’ll never guess. Try Malcolm X.

Actually, Madonna first chose the late Frida Kahlo to trade places with, but remembered that the painter was in a streetcar accident and was in a lot of pain. So the assassinated black Muslim leader was her next choice.

Madonna answered these and other questions submitted by readers of the teen magazine YM. Her answers are in the August issue, which hit newsstands Wednesday.

Other gems: The best present she ever received was “a handful of sweaty diamonds and emeralds.” She didn’t say from whom.

If she had only two days to live she’d spend them “eating potato chips, watching ‘The Little Rascals.’ ”

And if Madonna could change herself in any way, what would she change?

“Just my hairdresser,” she says.