Bizarre Beauty – Five of the Strangest Treatments in the World

It’s not all that long ago that the very idea of submerging your feet in a salon tub so that little fish could eat dead skin off your feet would be completely abhorrent to most women. Nowadays, a fish pedicure is just one mainstream beauty treatment available all over the country. Beauty is a very strange business indeed. Here’s the Her.ie guide to the top five strange beauty try/buys for the more adventurous girl, with a strong stomach necessary for some… Bird Droppings Facial Ever come out of a facial thinking ‘that was a bit crap’? Well, you’d be well entitled to if you head for an authentic Japanese facial using ‘Uguisu No Fun’. No fun by name, and we can’t say it sounds like the experience is a barrel of laughs either, as the term translates as Nightingale faeces. This very special bird poop is known for its bleaching and exfoliating properties apparently. The Geishas have been fans for centuries, and now you can get shitfaced too. Where to get it: Pick up a container of the powdered droppings in a supermarket in Japan (it’s no big deal there), or get the full on treatment on your next New York jaunt here. Whale Vomit Perfume Whales like to eat some freaky stuff. To protect their stomach lining they secret a waxy substance called Ambergris. Over time, this substance builds up inside the whale’s tummy and must be eliminated. Up it comes, and voilà! Whale puke floating in the deep blue for anyone opportunistic enough to grab it. Someone, God knows how, discovered that it works very well in perfumes to create a musky scent and also to make other scents last. It was once widely used, but now synthetic variations are preferred. Where to get it: Still rumoured to be floating around in some very well known perfumes, but if you want to be absolutely sure you’ve got the real deal you can order yours here. Beer Bath Ok in fairness, this one really doesn’t sound so bad. Our mammies passed on the old belief that a beer in the final rinse made freshly washed hair nice and shiny, but we’ve never tested the theory. Taking it to the next level, there are now salons across Europe who’ll let you take to the tub in bathing beer. Let the hops exfoliate your skin while your pores open to absorb the vitamins – well, that’s the theory anyway. If all else fails at least you’ll smell irresistible to the local males. Where to get it: If just pouring a bottle into your own bath won’t have the same effect, use a girl’s weekend away in Prague as excuse to try this treatment out. Sheep Placenta Wrinkle Cream Some people eat placenta, you know. Some really freaky people. It was common practice in some animal species so of course there was a human or two out there who saw and thought ‘Yes! Great idea! We should do that too!’ You can get a placenta fix without chowing down on afterbirth though, in the form of a sheep placenta formulation sold as an anti-wrinkle cream. Where to get it: Salons in cities including London and New York offer the full facial treatments, but you can easily buy your own bottle of Dolly placenta on the web. NeuCell is just one of many options. Snake Massage There’s nothing like a good massage, and this looks nothing like a good massage. At Ada Barak’s Carnivorus Plant Farm in Israel you can have a pile of snakes slither across your back, tails braided together to slow down their escape (they didn’t sign up for this either you know). Barack claims that once people get over their initial fear of the snakes they find the actual contact very therapeutic. Where to get it: There’s no website for the spa so it’s just a case of booking a flight and making your way to Talmei Elazar, or indeed if you just happen to be in the Holy Land and have a crick in your neck – drop on by…