She paid someone at a Manhattan day spa $180 to do it for her.
“When it comes to fighting aging, many of us will try anything,” she admitted.
The treatment, which is supposed to brighten and exfoliate the skin, is called a Geisha Facial, and it mixes the powdered bird droppings with rice bran.
According to a cosmetics industry spokeswoman, stuff derived from animals — or out of them — are the latest trend in the skin-care market.
Wrinkle Butter is made from earthworm excrement. ProSina comes from New Zealand sheep’s wool. Masque*ology contains snail secretion.
A few years ago, synthetic snake venom face cream was in vogue. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow reportedly has worn a Bee Venom Mask.
To be fair, although most of these attempts to deny Mother Nature and Father Time their due are marketed for women, men aren’t totally immune to the search for the miracle ingredient that will make their skin as soft as Justin Bieber’s bottom.
On my recent trip to Israel, for instance, I watched people smearing themselves, and each other, with mud from the Dead Sea, which allegedly would make their skin softer. A lot of the smearers were guys who seemed to be getting way too much pleasure from rubbing the mud on other men’s bodies.
And actor Mel Gibson has confessed to using cow brains, which he claims, “cleans the neurotransmitters and sharpens mental focus.”
I don’t know how clean his transmitters are today, but in his case, some supplemental brains probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Clearly, though, women are far more likely to be the ones willing to pay $180 to have stuff put on their faces that they would find disgusting if they found it on the hood of their car. Even though there’s no guarantee they’ll walk out of the spa looking any better than they did when they walked in.
“We have very little data to know if these cosmetics work,” Dr. Joshua Zeichner, director of cosmetic and clinical research at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, is quoted as saying in The Times story.
Maybe that’s why my wife hasn’t said anything about trying the bird poop treatment yet.
But, if she ever does, I’m willing to buy her a Japanese parakeet.
Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.
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