Breast milk, bulls semen, bird poop and even babies foreskins are being hailed as the ultimate fountain of youth for skin and hair in today’s beauty market. It seems the most disgusting ingredients can be sold to us at extortionate prices if the sales woman manages to keep a straight face as she is explaining the benefits.
Whilst visiting my dermatologist the other day, feeling particularly vulnerable as I was sitting semi-reclined in the cold, stark office waiting for her to enter the room, my mind darted back to a previous dermatologist who had managed to sell two bottles of anti-wrinkle serum at over $300 a pop to my sister and I.
I remember her being over enthusiastic about the results she had seen with this particular product, and she was raving about the rarity of the ingredients, babies foreskins nonetheless.
It didn’t matter that my sister and I (at the time) were in our late twenties and didn’t really have much in the way of wrinkles, or that our average food budget for the entire month was roughly the same as the cost of this bottle of cream. Her overwhelming enthusiasm and promise of a full refund if we didn’t like the results snake charmed us into parting with our money.
We left the building that day full of hope that the product would actually deliver results and that we hadn’t been duped.
It took us a few days, but we returned the products, demanded a full refund and never went back to that particular dermatologist.
As I sat there remembering this ridiculous encounter, I had to stop myself from laughing out loud, obviously for fear of looking like a crazy woman, semi reclined and laughing alone in a cold white room, but I couldn’t help but wonder, what other absurd ingredients are being sold to vulnerable women the world over with the promise of eternal youth.
Here are six, of the most bazaar:
1. Elicina Cream - contains 80% snail secretion
YEP – SNAIL TRAIL CREAM.
ELICINA cream claims to stimulates the regeneration of your skin, improving skin elasticity, softens and aids the skins natural ability to regenerate itself from fine facial lines and wrinkles, stretch marks & hyper pigmentation.
2. Mother’s Moon Breast Milk Soap
Mother’s Moon soaps are made from the breast milk of the company’s owner who calls herself the barefoot storyteller.
Apparently this business was born in honor of her son's first birthday, when she wanted to give her friends who attended the celebration something special that they could take home with them. The soap was made from her own breast milk during the "Mothers Moon" that May, and named “Mothers Moon Milk-Soap”
Breast friend – no more!
3. Collagen Marshmallows
These wrinkle-busting Collagen Marshmallows contain 3000mg collagen peptides per pack, and are said to pump up the body’s collagen levels, in turn aiding skin flexibility, softness and resiliency. My inner fat girl loves this concept. However, I can’t help but wonder if the fullness in your face comes from basic weight gain!
4. The Nightingale Facial at Hari's salon in London - sounds fancy but is literally a facial made of bird poop. Victoria Beckham is apparently a fan and claims it keeps her complexion luminous – dull skin has never sounded so good.
5. Bull’s semen hair conditioning treatment. It seems Hari's salon in London has yet more unexpected uses for animal effluent.
Hari's intensively moisturizing hair treatment contains the sperm of organically reared Angus bulls.
Apparently the sperm is incredibly high in pure proteins that penetrate the hair deep into the shaft, nourishing it from within.
Salon staff claim that the effects of the sperm carry on working days after it's been applied, and customers rave that they've never seen their hair look so shiny.
- Live fish pedicure.
An ancient treatment devised in Turkish spas and popular throughout the whole of Asia, these tiny toothless fish - known as doctor fish - have a penchant for devouring dead skin. The fish produce a chemical in their saliva that softens outer skin layers, which they then painlessly nibble away at, ridding feet of dead skin and revealing healthy, new skin beneath.
www.skintherapyireland.com
