What the What? Beauty Madness #1

Snails.  The future of beauty?

I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not a high maintenance beauty person.  I love trawling the makeup aisles as much as the next girl, but I’ve reached the age where I know that promises made by beauty companies are made up by ad agencies, and the models that they use aren’t really out of their teens.  Don’t get me wrong, I still get excited about finding the perfect lip pencil, but I’m a realist.

I’ve picked up a few magazines whilst travelling lately, and Cleo from Singapore had me alternately snorting with mirth and open mouthed with horror.

Exhibit A – Bio-Essence Bio-Energy Snail Secretion Repair Serum

Yes, you read that correctly, SNAIL SECRETION.  Bet you didn’t know that “snail secretion, which contains collagen proteins, allantoin, vitamins and natural anti-bacterial peptides, repairs skin damage and stimulates skin renewal”.  Oh, yes it does, people, it sure does.

The small print states “no harm was done to the snails during the extraction process”.  So how do they get the secretion out then?  Are there a group of work experience students crawling behind herds of snails, scraping up the slimy stuff they leave behind?  Or do they pick them up and drag their slimy under-tummies across the top of a jar?

More to the point, WHY WOULD YOU PUT SNAIL SLIME ON YOUR FACE?  And how did they find out that snail secretion does such things?

I’ll never look at a snail the same way again.

The modern face of beauty.