I’m a Blogger, Get Me Out of Here!

I was lucky enough to be invited by NBC to compete in a contest in conjunction with their new reality series, I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! We were all given an assignment to write about the gross-out ingredients in things we use every day. This post is my entry. PLEASE go vote for me on the NBC site after 3 pm PST!! Thanks so much!!

As a special incentive for all of you, if I do get to go, I promise to do a couple of the gross-out challenges on video for you. You want to see that, don’t you?

Wear What?!?

The celebs that are going to be facing the ickiest of challenges in the jungle for I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here think it will be the first time they’ve encountered the gross-out factor. This should show that it’s probably not the first time for them at all.

For example, do you know what’s in that lipstick you put on this morning? What about your perfume? You might be surprised!!

Let’s start with the perfume. One of the most coveted and expensive traditional ingredients in perfume is ambergris. Whales make it in their intestines to break down the hard substances in their foods. Usually, it’s expelled in the feces, but sometimes, it forms lumps too large to expel that way, so the whale spits it up. Yuck!

Musk is supposed to be a very alluring fragrance, but did you know that it comes from the musk deer? The musk glands in the deer are located near its genitals. Not so exciting now, eh?

And there’s cow dung. It’s used to make a very pleasant vanilla scented fragrance. I’ll stick with plain old vanilla extract…

And what about cosmetics? That nice red color in your lipstick is probably carmine from ground up cochineal beetles. The beetles are boiled, dried and pulverized before being used to color your cosmetics.

A number of facial creams contain placenta. That’s right, it’s the afterbirth when a baby is born. Usually it’s taken from animals, and it’s said to help stimulate tissue growth, reduce wrinkles and is good for your hair, but it’s never been proven.

Some hair products and treatments contain bull semen. The protein in it is supposed to make your hair shiny. Not bad if your hair is supposed to be spiked, I guess.

Some specialty soaps are made with human breast milk. I don’t know what benefit it’s supposed to offer, but it’s out there if you want it.

There are specialty wrinkle creams that contain snake venom. There’s no proof that it works, but why not?

Don’t forget the spa treatments. These days, the big new fad is to get a facial containing nightingale poop. It’s a cute bird, but I don’t want its poop on my face, what about you?

You can also drop a bundle to put your feet in a basin of water and let little Doctor Fish eat the dried skin, calluses and psoriasis away. They only eat the dead skin and leave the healthy skin. Here in the US, there has been some question of safety for this treatment, so beware.

As I sit writing and drinking my coffee, I just have to include this last one. There’s a special kind of coffee that is supposed to taste amazingly smooth. It’s called Kopi Luwak and it’s made with coffee beans that have been partially digested by civet cats. The beans are harvested from the feces of the animal and used to make the coffee. For real.

Yum! My low-cost, non-digested coffee is just fine for me!

Please go vote for me! Thanks so much!