– Aarti Kapur Singh
Modern times and the craze to be body beautiful have given the adage ‘beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder’ a new twist. In their quest for the ultimate youth elixir, women (and some men) now feel beauty lies in the eyes of the believer. So while Madonna swears by a face cream made out of human placenta, Demi Moore uses blood-sucking leeches to detoxify. Humans, following the path of their ancestors, are willing to go from dangerous, bizarre, sickening and sometimes ridiculous treatments to conform to the societal ideas of beauty.
So if tribal women putting deforming metal coils around their neck was regressive, and in China, elderly women crippled by the torturous foot binding procedures, was alarming, brace yourselves and read on to know the extent to which people can go in their obsession for vanity.
Snakes, on the plain
It was a snake that tempted Eve, leading to her being expelled from the Garden of Eden and cursed to mortal life, replete with ageing, suffering and wrinkles. And the woman of today certainly feels it is payback time. Several skincare companies are also incorporating a type of ‘synthetic’ venom into their concoctions to lessen the visible signs of ageing.
The logic is this – venomous snakes paralyze their prey by injecting them with a toxin. This muscle-paralyzing ability of snake venom is being harvested to work like topical botox. Syn-Ake is the key ingredient of UltraLuxe 9, an anti-ageing potion by the amazingly-named Beverly Hills dermatologist Sonya Dakar, whose A-list clientele includes Drew Barrymore, Fergie, Ben Kingsley, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Amino acids in the venom block nerve signals, making muscles contract and stop wrinkle-formation.
And apparently, this is just not the only way in which snakes can help us be youthful. At Ada Barak’s spa in Northern Israel, snakes (non-venomous, of course) knead, massage and soothe the knots while they slither over your back, chest, legs, feet, head and even face. The heavier Florida King snakes are used for a stronger pressure while the Corn and Milk snakes are usually used for the face. The masseuse will be present during the entire session to allay any fears that you may have and also to gently nudge the snakes in a particular direction from time to time.
Check this video, to understand snake massage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s7KkI-fo3M
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Snail Slime Cream
Snail slime treatment (yes, you are reading it right) is available as creams or serums and as facial (snails deposit carbohydrates and proteins on the skin as they crawl along your face). The mucus apparently creates a layer between the snail and the surface on which it crawls – keeping it moisturized and hydrated. So if it works for them, it must work for us. Snail serum has been clinically proven to help maintain as well as improve cell function. It helps avoid excess or abnormal scars including acne scarring, counteracts sun damage and prevents premature skin ageing and wrinkles.
Bull Semen Conditioner
Now, this is definitely not something for the chicken-hearted, you need b**** for this. Hair salons in UK are selling bull semen as the ultimate answer for hair loss. At nearly $80 for a session, they promise to give people with receding hairlines a full head of crowning glory again. No wonder, it is also called ‘viagra for hair’. Hari’s a posh London salon offers the exotic sounding Aberdeen Organic Bull Semen Treatment – that combines the semen of Aberdeen Angus bulls with Katera root to create a protein-rich hair mask that drenches follicles in gobs of moisture.
The mixture of the sperm and the root is applied as a gel to freshly washed hair, massaged in and left for 30-45 minutes, followed by a complimentary blow dry. “The results speak for themselves, the hair is soft and full-bodied,” says Salem. Hold on to the dirty humour. Dr Isaac Simeos, from SkinScience, says, “Semen contains a powerful antioxidant and is much stronger than Vitamin E. In fact, spermine is multipurpose beauty therapy – it moisturizes the skin, regenerates and replenishes dry hair and heals sunburn.” Semen’s level of glycosphingolipids, a fatty substance that reinforces the skin’s lipid barrier, keeping it hydrated, as well as it’s mineral richness semen that boosts aged cells, combined with its film-forming aspect (that pulls protein cells taut) – give skin as well as hair an instant lift effect. That seems all nice and scientific. But it is the common man’s word that will count.
The Nightingale Facial
We may have tried to give it a propah and exotic name. But the ingredients of this specialized beauty treatment are as basic as bodily waste. Literally. Except that we are talking bird poop here. Nightingale droppings have had their praises sung in Japan by geishas and Kabuki actors for their brightening and skin-reparative abilities, due to the presence of certain enzymes. This is what gave this therapy, followed also by Tom Cruise, the name “geisha facial”.
Manhattan’s Shizuka New York Day Spa sterilizes the droppings under UV light. It is then powdered, mixed with rice bran and water and applied on the face. The science behind this actually makes sense. The rarified droppings are rich in the amino acid guanine that breaks down dead cells and cleanses the skin. “In addition, the uric acid present in the droppings sloughs away the layers of dead skin as well as naturally bleaches it – to give you a soft, pearl-like complexion,” asserts Dr Shizuka Bernstein, owner of the spa, who used her Japanese mother’s traditional tales to research into the efficacy on this procedure.
So all ready to try out these unheard beauty regimes.
