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A nanny once told me that one surefire way to get rid of pimples is to rinse your face with your own periods. But before you scoff at this, check out some of the more bizarre beauty treatments that have piqued people’s curiosity enough to queue up outside certain day spas :

Woman Bathing


Nightingale Facial
Nothing like bird faeces slathered all over your face to make your skin look more translucent and flawless. This is Diamond Hawaii Resort & Spa’s signature facial and the geishas were the first to discover the benefits of nightingale excrement for the skin. Perhaps in ten years’ time, someone will discover the benefits of dog crap that will have us scurrying toward our pets with a plastic bag everytime they hunch over and we can say goodbye to swearing viciously everytime we step on one when we have a picnic…

Butt treatment
We get our faces scrubbed and exfoliated but someone had the bright idea that we should also look after our second set of cheeks down south. I call this the Buttial where your backside is cleansed, exfoliated, applied a mask to, waxed (if required), massaged and moisturised so your ass can look polished and feel oh-so smooth. Perfect for summer when you want to gallivant around on the beach with a g-string.

Cupping
Remember when sticking needles into your body drew some raised eyebrows and elicited the ‘WTF?’ Well, cupping is another form of acupuncture that’s supposed to encourage blood flow and ease muscle aches and pains. Small glass cups are lit and immediately applied to the skin. Even though clients will earn deep purple bruises that will last about a week, the process is painless. And if it’s good enough for Gwyneth Paltrow, it’s good enough for the rest of us.


Beer Spa
Here’s something that would encourage more men into day spas – in Czech Republic, Austria and Germany anyway. How’s soaking into a huge bubbling tub of warm beer sound? Landhotel Moorhof in Austria would have us believe that the yeast in beer contains vitamins that give you a better complexion while relieving the stress from your muscles. And don’t worry, before you can sit there and contemplate on whether you should dunk your head in the tub and gulp as much of beer as you can, you’re given a few pints of beer – to drink.

Ramen Noodle Spa
Immersing yourself in a tub of ramen noodles and pork broth, as you would in Yunessa Spa, Japan, supposedly boosts your overall metabolism while cleansing your skin. Just add a sprinkle of sliced green onions and a teaspoon of soy sauce and you can feel like the pork in a soup.

Snake massage
Would you pay $80 to have six snakes slithering all over your back? NO! A salon in Northern Israel now has a waiting list of clients who want the experience of having these reptiles writhing all over their bodies to soothe aching muscles and stiff joints. While Ada Barak who performs this treatment is always at hand to ensure the non-venomous snakes don’t go into certain…er…delicate areas, that’s hardly enough to convince me that this treatment is meant to be relaxing. What’s next? A crocodile rolling on your back as another form of remedial massage? No thanks.

*image from www.wikipedia.com
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What was your worst beauty buy?

August 28th 2007 01:24
Recently my sister was conned persuaded into buying a plethora of skincare products to treat her acne-prone skin. Two weeks later, she lamented over the loss of $300 of her hard-earned money on products that had only made her skin cry out for hydration as it sprouted a multitude of big, red angry pimples. As much as I was tempted to ask her why she chose to trust a beauty therapist whose face resembled an abstract painting of oranges and blues and who looked like she wrestled with a cheap can of tan spray judging by the zigzag colours of her cleavage, sadly, it’s a tale I’ve heard (and moaned out myself) too often. In our desperate attempt to imitate the flawless, glowing faces of our favourite celebs and retain our youth, beauty products will continue to be a hit and miss and my sister was not the first – or the last – to vow revenge on these beauty companies for false advertising.

In the past several years, I’ve probably thrown out a hundred garbagefuls of useless beauty and cosmetic products. Here are only some of the products I bought in 2007 that I wish I hadn’t spent the time, money and effort on :

Honey Moisturising Shampoo & Conditioner from The Body Shop
The Body Shop Honey Moisturising Shampoo
The Body Shop contains all natural ingredients across their range of products and, after falling in-love with White Musk, I stupidly thought I’d feel the same for the Honey Moisturising Shampoo & Conditioner. Not so. Not only was I not fond of the nut smell (what happened to the scent of the main ingredient, honey?), the shampoo and conditioner combo only made my hair dry and brittle that I actually heard squeaking noises as I combed it. These are probably the worst shampoo and conditioner products I’ve ever used and that’s saying something considering my mum used to buy those $2 strawberry shampoos from The Reject Shop. And for $17.50 each, you’d think they’d do the job.

Volume Shocking Mascara by Loreal
Loreal Volume Shocking Mascara
With its dual applicators (lash definition and a top coat) and shaped like an eye, the packaging was attractive. Of course, it also helps that someone like Aishwarya Rai is promoting it on TV. Which makes me wonder how long her make-up artist took to untangle the black clumps created by the top coat because it made my lashes stick together and were really clumpy, trying to separate them with a brush didn’t work. And what’s with up with making the base coat grey? As I didn’t want to apply too much of the top coat due to the clumpiness factor, it didn’t cover up the greys created by the base coat so my eyelashes looked like they were growing old with me. I am a fan of Loreal cosmetics but this was gets a thumbs down.

Veet Hair Removal Cream for Sensitive Skin
Veet Hair Removal Cream Sensitive
Shaving apparently only makes your hair grow back thicker and waxing hurts like hell. So why not try a hair removal cream? Apply it to a hairy patch, wipe it off after a few minutes and voila! Hair gone, leaving your skin feeling silky smooth – as the promo would have us believe. While I was prepared to accept that this hair cream didn’t make all my hair completely disappear – sometimes it resembled a forest with the trees chopped halfway down, I didn’t understand why the cream made my skin itchy, red and irritable, resulting in a scar (similar to one you’d get if you’d been distracted shaving) the next day. If this cream is for the sensitive skin, I would hate to try out the one for normal skin. So back to waxing I go.

Any of those backless, strapless adhesive bras
Backless Strapless Bra
If you’re a size bigger than a C, do not try any of these bras that supposedly offer all the support you need for your fuller size. Even though the cup I got was a size D, the cups didn’t even cover a quarter of my boobs and hung limply at the bottom like sagging excess skin.


What was your worst beauty buy so far for 2007?
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What's your Daily Beauty regime?

July 23rd 2007 00:04
As I had already highlighted in one of my old posts, I used to be a beauty product marketer’s dream. If I was impressed by an advert, I bought the advertised product the next day. And if a sales clerk happened to stop me and gave me a spiel on why I should buy certain beauty products, I would. And if I asked a sales clerk what products would be recommended for my specific skin problems and she listed 100 products, I would walk out of the shop with a $500 charge on my credit card.

Beauty Model
Despite what the ads say, no beauty products in the world can make me look like this


With so many beauty products littering my bathroom, one can only imagine how long it would take me to get ready in the morning. Between the cleanser and moisturiser, I had toners, boosters, daily exfoliators, serums, anti-ageing creams and blemish creams. It took me three years to realise that most of these products were doing nothing for my skin. With the money I’d wasted on these products, I could have put myself up in a bure on stilts over the water in Asia or South Pacific for a week!

My advice? Keep it simple. I think slathering too many products on your skin will only do damage to it in the long run anyway. Now, I only have a cleanser and moisturiser in my bathroom cabinet and it only takes me 10 minutes to get ready – that includes brushing your teeth and getting dressed.

I'm curious to find out - What’s your daily beauty regime and how long does it take you to get ready? Have you also been roped into buying products just because of an ad?


*image from www.wikipedia.com
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And now, it's finally come to this...

# Pot Scourer, the new exfoliator

When Clearasil damaged my face – made it dry, itchy and started causing some dark spots to appear, mainly around my nose and mouth, I set about to remedy it.

Stainless Steel Pan

I was staring at my face in the mirror for a while, wondering what I could use, when I spotted the Scotch-Brite Heavy Duty Sponge by the sink. A light bulb went over my head. After all, the sponge gets rid of grime and dirt from dishes and cutlery, it should do the same for the skin. Right? So I happily scrubbed away at my chin. Was the discolouration disappearing? No. It was actually making my skin red, feel rough and slightly irritable. You would think I would have stopped right there but no, I realised I had to go heavier duty. I enlisted the help of Scotch-Brite Heavy Duty Sponge’s companion, Stainless Steel Scourer. When I started scouring away, I had to fight back a yelp. The texture was hurting my skin, like someone was scratching at an existing wound but I doggedly went on scrubbing anyway.

What resulted, as anyone would have guessed, was a very irritable, rough bleeding skin around my mouth. Finally, the mad gleam in my eyes dissipated and I flung the scourer and sponge away, leaving them where they belonged – in the kitchen sink. Meanwhile, I had no one else to blame when I woke up the next morning and the skin around my mouth had turned pimply and even darker so that in dim light, I actually look like I had a moustache and a beard. For the next few weeks, whenever I had to speak to a guy I liked, I made a habit of bringing a book or a sheet of paper to cover my mouth. I could only be grateful that during my temporary insanity, it hadn’t occurred to me to tackle the discolouration around my nose too.


So, what's the stupidest thing YOU'VE done for the sake of beauty?

*image from www.wikipedia.com


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#9 Detox your body - Drink 8 to 10 litres of water a day

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I was 14 when I started paying close attention to models in magazines like Dolly and Girlfriend. This was the time when the airbrushing of models and actors by paintstakingly meticulous graphic designers was still a secret and all teenage girls thought that what they saw of their favourite model and actor in their pictures was all natural.

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5) Once a week, use an exfoliator and a hydrating masque
The exfoliator will remove the build up of dry, dull surface skin cells and helps diminish blackheads while the mask locks in much-needed moisture. But I don’t recommend exfoliating more than once a week as I find this eventually dries up my skin.

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It took me 20 years to figure out that, yes, I do have dry skin. This means that in the middle of winter, when my face is in direct exposure to the heater/airconditioner, if I skip the moisturiser for a single routine or I accidentally use alcohol-based products, my skin becomes taut and the small lines on my forehead, around my eyes and mouth are more visible. My skin also feels rough, due to the tiny bumps that are visible only under harsh lights but were enough at one point to alert my co-workers as I looked in the mirror and promptly screamed, certain that someone had cast a voodoo spell on me. In some severe cases, my skin develops red, itchy and flaky patches, especially the skin on the side of my nose where the pores are bigger and I get the tremendous urge to scratch away.

In these 20 years, through many trial and error runs, I managed to learn some tips on how to combat symptoms of a dry skin :

[ Click here to read more ]
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