Clients drop $180 for bird poop facials
NEW YORK – Bird poop for beauty?
That’s what goes into facials at a luxury spa where the traditional Japanese treatment using imported Asian nightingale excrement mixed with rice bran goes for $180 a pop.
About 100 women and men go into the Shizuka New York skin care salon, just off Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, each month to get the treatment, which is promoted as a way to keep the face soft and smooth using an enzyme in the poop to gently exfoliate the skin.
Spa owner Shizuka Bernstein, a Tokyo native married to an American, has been offering what she calls the Geisha Facial for about five years.
“I try to bring Japanese beauty secrets to the United States,” says Bernstein, who learned the treatment from her mother.
The Geisha Facial poop treatment, while relatively rare in the United States, is no secret in Japan, where it was first used in the 1600s by actors and geishas.
“That’s why Japanese grandmothers have beautiful complexions,” says Duke Klauck, owner of the Ten Thousand Waves health spa in Santa Fe, N.M., which offers a Nightingale Facial for $129.
The treatment begins with steam to open the pores and soften the skin. Cream is applied. And then comes what Bernstein calls “the nightingale part.”
She pours the cream-colored poop, dried and finely ground, into a bowl, mixing it with the rice bran using a small spatula. She applies the potion to the face with a brush, rubbing it in with her hands.
Does it smell?
“Yes, but like toasted rice,” the client says.
After about five minutes, it comes off with a foaming cleanser. The grand finale is a green-tea collagen mask.