While I was cruising headlines, Gwyneth Paltrow’s name showed up. If you’re like me, then your eyes roll to the back of your head every time you hear her name. She’s the annoying type of healthy person who eats to live. Remember when she told us about her diet that literally consisted of delicious air and self-righteousness? Yeah, that was a good time.
This time around, Paltrow has shared a part of her beauty regimen that includes paying someone to allow her to be stung by bees. News flash: She says it’s painful. There’s got to be some astronomical benefit to this type of extreme tactic, right? Wrong. Paltrow says it’s thousands of years old and it helps with inflammation and scarring. That’s nothing coconut oil or cocoa butter can’t cure. However, money (read: privilege) leads those who’ve got it to do some pretty off-the-wall things, because they can.
Paltrow’s annoying beauty regimen made me do my Googles, and I found out that she’s not the only white person to do something a bit ridiculous, all in the name of beauty. Check out these other WTF beauty (and health) tips by … (risking sounding too much like the Hamilton casting call) nonblacks:
1. Semen facials (exactly what it sounds like)
2. Lip fillers
4. Vampire facial (uses your own blood to prepare a product enabling the administration of your concentrated platelets and tissue-building elements)
5. Stem cell therapy and human growth hormone injections
6. Cryotherapy (sit in a chamber and freeze; Toni Braxton did one of these, but she’s got a majority mentality, right?)
7. Infrared saunas (hello, overheating)
8. Halotherapy (sit inside a salt chamber to improve breathing/sinuses)
9. Chelation therapy (synthetic-solution EDTA [ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid] is injected into the bloodstream to remove heavy metals and/or minerals from the body)
10. Geisha facials (nightingale droppings on your face)
11. Bull-semen treatments (to strengthen hair shafts, pun totally intended)
12. Lymphatic drainage with facial cupping (to eliminate excess fluids)
13. Leeching or hirudotherapy (to restore circulation in blocked blood veins)
14. Sun eating (for weight loss)
15. Eating clay (to detox)
16. Ingesting pills of (odorless, freeze-dried) human fecal matter (for weight loss)
17. Hyperbaric chamber (to increase oxygen concentration in all body tissues, even with reduced or blocked blood flow; to stimulate the growth of new blood vessels to locations with reduced circulation, improving blood flow to areas with arterial blockage)
18. Ayahuasca (spiritual awakening)
Yeah, none of these seem fun. And yes, black people also do ridiculous things for beauty; for example:
1. Stay all day in the hair salon for a style that’s only fresh for a week
2. Have eye-color surgery for lighter-colored eyes
3. (Deadly) butt injections
4. Braids (either under the weave or as the style itself) that are way too tight, but we have to because … laid
5. Skin lightening
6. Toothbrush and gel to those pesky edges
What crazy thing have you done for beauty or health?