If you thought your tri-monthly Botox jabs were bad enough, you ain’t seen nothing yet. We strapped on our investigator hats and rounded up some of the world’s wildest, most outrageous beauty treatments that Frankenstein himself would baulk at.
WEIRD
Snakeskin manicure
From your typical luxury handbag, the python print has slithered its away onto your digits, resulting in the snakeskin manicure which uses – yup, you guessed it – naturally shed snakeskin. Yes, ssseriously… Costing an exorbitant £62 per nail in London’s Hand & Foot Spa, you can be sure this is one manicure that puts all forms of fancy nail art to shame.
Chocolate Body Wrap
Ok, we admit: this sounds more like a Willy Wonka fantasy come true. Sure, the idea of being slathered head-to-toe in warm, chocolatey goodness to revitalise and nourish our skin delights the chocoholic in us, but we can’t help but ask: Is it ok to sample a bit of chocolate if we get peckish during the treatment? What happens to all that chocolate when the treatment’s over? For a taste of this decadent treat that’ll make Augustus Goop weep in envy, there’s only one place that does it right – the Chocolate Spa at Hotel Hershey in Hershey, Pennsylvania (aka chocolate heaven).
Absolute Zero
Cryotherapy
Standing around in your skivvies in -110 degree Celsius temperatures – now that sounds like a form of medieval torture. But don’t knock Cryotherapy until you’ve tried it: this weight-loss treatment will reportedly help you burn 1000 calories in one session by shocking the body with extreme temperatures and boosting your metabolism. Intrigued? Absolute Zero, Asia’s first and only Whole Body Cryotherapy (WBC) chain, also offers The Face Freeze: a cryogenic facial treatment that promises to reduce wrinkles and pores, soothe skin inflammation, and brighten dark spots using liquid nitrogen. Brr….
Absolute Zero, various outlets. See website for details.
WEIRDER
Snail facial
Leech therapy to treat venous diseases: icky but ultimately beneficial. A snail facial where live snails are placed on a patient’s face for youthful looking skin: gross. Trust the Japanese to come up with the oddest beauty treatment yet. The key lies in the slime excreted by these little critters, which contain antioxidants, proteins, and hyaluronic acid. If the very thought of it makes your skin crawl, snail cream is your answer. It contains all of the benefits with none of the yuck-factor.
Vampire Facelift
Ok, Twilight mania has officially gone too far. No longer content with merely lusting over Edward Cullen, some are now coveting his eternally youthful looks. How? Enter the Vampire Facelift: a cosmetic procedure where blood is drawn from a patient and injected into the skin of his/her face to treat wrinkles and stimulate new collagen production. Thanks, but no thanks. We’d rather read the entire Twilight series (backwards).
Shizuka New York Day Spa Geisha facial
Geisha facial
As elegant as it may sound, the Geisha Facial is anything but that. Given that it contains one key ingredient – bird poop or more specifically, nightingale poop. Its name derives from ancient Japanese times, when geishas and kabuki actors used nightingale droppings to remove heavy stage makeup and treat their skin. Capitalising on its exotic past is the Shizuka New York Day Spa, where customers fork out US$180 just to have bird feces smeared on their faces.
WEIRDEST
Toe-posuction
The quest for the perfect body has sunk to new lows – your toes, to be exact. Forget about their waistlines, American women have bigger fish to fry: ‘toe-besity’ which has made them resort to gruesome reconstruction procedures, where their toes are split open, the bones ground down and fat sucked out, all for the sake of looking good in high heels. Look, we love our Louboutins as much a fat boy loves cake but are they really worth the agony of surgery?
Tittooing
It first started out as a procedure for breast cancer survivors after undergoing reconstruction surgery and has since turned into the latest beauty fad amongst ladies from Liverpool, England: tittooing. Nipple tattooing, as it is officially known, is all about achieving the perfect pair of nipples, either by darkening, enlarging or defining them to your satisfaction. Not only does that sound like unnecessary torture (a buzzing needle on that part of our body? Ouch!), tittooing is also pretty painful to your wallet – a two-hour procedure for both nipples costs £1,200 (double ouch!). We’ll leave this one to the footballers’ WAGs.
Top image: Christine Holding / Courtesy of Bio Sculpture Gel Snakeskin Manicure