Beauty is pain. You may have heard the saying before. In many cases, there’s some truth to it.
True beauty comes from within, but it doesn’t hurt to feel like you look good on the outside. Getting there could involve trying a lot of off the wall things. Let’s take a look at some of the extremes people go through in the name of beauty.
Going to Great Lengths for Amazing Hair
For countless men and women, having a beautiful head of hair is an absolute must, and they go to great lengths to get it. Women use a long curly weave to achieve a full head of hair, but balding men have to go to more extreme measures.
The latest craze is a tattooing trick know as trichopigmentation. Small dots are tattooed on the scalp to create the illusion of hair. It can make thinning hair look thicker or give a bald head a shaved appearance.
Of course, some people go to the other extreme. People will suffer all sorts of pain to get rid of hair once and for all. Lasers and electricity-filled needles are just two of the excruciating ways to permanently remove hair anywhere on the body. And I mean anywhere.
Crazy Facials
Facials have been used to perfect complexions for thousands of years. Cultures across the world have come up with all kinds of ingredients to add to facials, some of which are far from anything you’d find in a spa. But hey, if they smooth fine lines and wrinkles, who cares?
One of the more bizarre facial ingredients is nightingale poop. In NYC spas offer bird poop facials based off of traditional treatments used in Japan for hundreds of years. For a mere $180, the bird poop enzymes are supposed to make your skin fresh and bright. If the thought of putting poop on your face grosses you out, you can always get a blood facial instead.
The Grapefruit Diet
This is an oldie but a goody. The grapefruit diet has been around since the 1930s. It’s the fad diet that just won’t quit. So, what do you have to put yourself through to lose weight on the grapefruit diet?
The theory is that enzymes in grapefruit help burn fat. There are a few different versions of the grapefruit diet, which usually lasts 10-12 days and can supposedly burn 10 pounds in that time. To achieve those results you have to eat grapefruit or grapefruit juice before anything else you eat anytime you eat.
Before you start punishing yourself by swinging down grapefruit juice for 10 days straight there are a few things to keep in mind. 1) The grapefruit diet also calls for cutting back your daily calorie intake. 2) It also calls for cutting out refined sugars and carbs. In other words, if you skip the grapefruit you’ll probably still drop the weight.
Snake Massages
Forget about your fear of needles during acupuncture. People are now braving their fear of snakes in the name of beauty. Everyone knows stress can create premature wrinkles. In Israel, spas have started to throwing piles of snakes on people’s back instead of having a masseuse do the kneading.
Cryotherapy
Who would have thought that putting your body into a deep freeze could make it look hotter? Cryotherapy machines are low-temperature chambers that chill everything from the neck down. Since fat cells are susceptible to cold regular cryotherapy treatments are thought to keep the body tight and right. Proponents also claim that braving Arctic temperatures slows cell aging and increases cell rejuvenation.
Vitamin IVs and Blood Transfusions
Beauty experts will tell you that what you put in your body is more important than what you put on your skin. Some people take that advice to the extreme. The latest trend among wealthy beauties is hooking up vitamin-filled IVs to give their complexion a boost. The only treatment more extreme is getting “young blood” transfusions to try to turn back the hands of time.
