5/3/2008

UPDATE

POOP-DE-DO0!
—FECAL FACIAL IS LATEST WACKY SKIN TREATMENT—
April 29, 2008 — New York Post….just $216, Shizuka Bernstein will slather your face in feces for a full 50 minutes – what she calls the “Geisha Facial” – at her Midtown spa, Shizuka New York. The ancient Japanese cleanser – geisha and kabuki dancers have been using the bird poop to wash off their heavy white makeup…more…

Let’s white happy!
While I’m in the drug store in Japan, I always find aisles devoted solely to skin whitening products. And my favorite traditional Japanese product for skin whitening is uguisu no fun aka swallow nightingale droppings. Being Bihaku ) or a ‘white beauty’ is hot shit here in Japan.

In a machine translation of the product description ofuguisu-no-fun, the cosmetics company uguisunofun.com says to whiten your skin you should take from 0.5 to 1.0 grams (about 1/3 of teaspoon) of the bird poop powder and mix it with soap in your palm and wash your face in the regular manner. Product No. 151 Container (26 g), price: 1,029 yen.

As Japanese love to quote the old Chinese saying: “Being white can cover/compensate for three times of ugliness. ” In the past months that I’ve spent in the hospital, the Japanese student nurses lube me up with NIVEA Whitening Body Lotion after my sponge bath and I always teased them I might disappear into the sheets.

For some women, it’s beauty and the bleach
Concord Monitor—-
….Take a daylight drive through Asian immigrant enclaves such as Monterey Park and Irvine, and you’ll see women trying to shield themselves with umbrellas – even for the short dash from a parking lot into a supermarket. While driving, many wear special “UV gloves”- which look like the long gloves worn with ball gowns – to protect their forearms, and don wraparound visors that resemble welder’s masks….There are doctors who, for about $1,000, will use an electrical field to deliver vitamins, moisturizers and bleaching agents to a woman’s face in a procedure known as a “mesofacial.” Whitening products have been a mainstay in Asia for decades, but cosmetics-industry officials said they have emerged as a hot seller in the United States …..….more….

Typical Japanese bihaku ads for skin whitening products (mostly fraudulent and ineffective like my hospital’s Whitening Body Lotion).