12 Ridiculous Women’s Health Fads

By The Manolith Team on October 19th, 2009

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Whether it’s an ideology, a diet, a mud bath, or the newest exercise-at-home video, women’s health fads just seem to get more ridiculous every year. Some have been around for a while and are now heating up, while others are new and have only recently exploded onto the scene, but one thing’s for certain: These 12 fads range from annoying to disturbing, to outright disgusting, and they couldn’t possibly go away soon enough.

The Bird-Poop Facial

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No, I am not shitting you. There is a new facial out there with actual nightingale excrement as a key ingredient. All jokes aside — and it’s difficult — this treatment is apparently not anything new. Apparently, women have been rubbing this stuff on their faces for generations. You too can have that nice, freshly shat-upon glow; in New York it’s only $180.

Volcanic Ash

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When we think of mud-bathing, it’s generally in some sort of association with mud wrestling, which makes us smile. This, unfortunately, is not anything nearly as stimulating. Volcanic ash mud baths are simply baths, in mud made from ash. Women will pay exorbitant amounts of money to sit and soak in sludge. The spas that offer this service actually import ash from the nearest volcanic ash vendor, which in and of itself is a strange thing to exist in the first place.

Babies’ Foreskins

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Some things are so ridiculous that they must be true. There simply is no other way to put it, especially when we’re talking about using babies’ foreskins as a beauty product. What began as an experimental ointment for burn-victims has gone down the inevitable path of all such things, and now fights wrinkles at a premium price. The women using it don’t generally know what it is they’re actually smearing on their crows’ feet, but they put up with the horrid stench and high price in case it’s working.

Oxygen Bars

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Forgetting the fact that anybody using one of these things looks like some sort of futuristic drug-addict from a bad sci-fi movie, oxygen bars are just plain stupid. They’ve now become the newest in a long line of fads that began with the first yoga mat sold to a suburban housewife. It’s gotten so out of hand lately that they can even be found for dogs — first appearing in Tokyo, but we can expect to see this soon as well.

Botox

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Even with all the bad publicity the world could muster, botox injections are still wildly popular, and not just with the aging cougars. Women have even started using this stuff to stop their armpits from sweating, as if it weren’t bad enough that they were using it on every part of their face and neck already. The disturbing sight of botox-use gone horribly wrong doesn’t seem to deter many from it, which is the truly scary part.

Semen

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Yep. Semen is now being used in ways we never even dreamed. There are reasons we never dreamed of those uses, either; they’re completely disgusting. Things have gotten so out of hand, that women don’t just stop at rubbing it in for the most literal facials possible, but have even gone as far as to make a cookbook for the stuff. It’s no joke — just think of flan, and then vomit.

Jazzercise

This one has to go down in the annals of pure half-assery, since it’s like an attempt to mix dancing with standing still. This is basically an excuse for overweight women to gather in seclusion and listen to dance music while moving around in leotards, while managing to stand in the same place. If they don’t actually go anywhere to meet with other women, then they’re doing this in their living room, but the point remains the same. It’s just lame.

Pole-Dancing

Again, we’re not about to say that women shouldn’t try new things when it comes to staying fit. That would be short-sighted, and even stupid, but this is different. The problem with pole-dancing becoming a normal thing for women to try at home, is that most normal women aren’t the type anybody would want to ever see straddling a pole.

Acai Berries

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Oprah, in all her vile glory, once opened her hell maw to say the words “acai” and “berry” in the same sentence. The Acai Berry sensation has since swept the world by storm, and we’ve all been made to suffer for her transgressions. Now, because of her, we can’t enter a single drugstore or GNC without seeing banners blazed across every flat surface reading Acai Berry sold here. Not one of these women ever bothered to stop and ask if there was actually any shred of truth behind it.

Obsessive Tanning

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You know exactly who these women are the moment you see them. When they enter a room, crowds hush a little, because everyone is stifling a laugh. These women just don’t realize they have a problem, and even go as far as to poke fun at paler girls who don’t live in a tanning salon. They don’t realize how ridiculous they look, and even think themselves beautiful, but it all comes to an end the moment their favorite fashion-magazine starts bashing the fake’n'bake.

Health Smoothies

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“Would you like to try a grass shot today?” No. No, I would not like to try your grass shot, thanks. Women everywhere flocked to the nearest juice-station the moment they were proclaimed as healthy by some unknown source somewhere in the last decade, and they haven’t stopped going since. The fact that their smoothies are nothing but glorified fruit-blends mixed with ice cream doesn’t seem to deter them, nor does the obvious fact that they could just eat the grass in their own front lawn. Might save them the $3.50 they pay for their grass shots.

Tae Bo, Etc.

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These television sensations cropped up somewhere in the dark ages of the 1980s, with VHS kickboxing and similar trends, but now it’s just plain ridiculous. While we can’t complain too much about any attempt women make to stay fit, these ridiculous, overblown dance-parties are churning out living-room martial artists. These women then go out into the world thinking they’re deadly weapons, and quickly learn their lesson the moment they move to deploy their devastating, slow-motion high kick.