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Beauty treatments for the insecure

THE FOLLOWING IS A TRUE STORY ABOUT BIG TIME DECEIT.

The rich (and especially the filthy rich) are the most insecure and gullible. They easily get fooled into spending thousands on improving their physical appearance.

Women with unfaithful husbands (or with husbands who are the most likely to become unfaithful) are the most vulnerable according to this former employee of a beauty center. Alex (real name withheld for security) says the insecure wives come to the beauty center out of curiosity and are then told that it's normal for men to have the hots for attractive women so ma'am, why don't you surprise your husband by undergoing our special body-wrap treatment? Whatever's left of the insecure wives' self-esteem is then given another jolt by the beauty center's "free" check-up which reveals that tsk-tsk ma'am you have to lose 5, 10, 15, 20 kilos (or more).

Usually, the terribly insecure wives take the bait and easily spend from 50,000 to 250,000 pesos for a series of treatments that are just, well, alcohol-laced cloth wrapped around the body. The insecure wives don't know this of course. The concoction supposedly causes the chemical reaction of skin tightening as the coldness of the alcohol comes into contact with the heat of the human body. Thing is, when body measurements are taken before the women undergo the body-wrap treatment, the beauty center's personnel make sure to add at least 2 inches. So the next time the women come to the clinic one week or so later, the beauty center's personnel who take the body measurements, can easily drop off an inch to make it appear that the body wrap procedure worked.

The insecure wives are so happy, they are easily enticed to upgrade to body-wrap *plus *plus which is actually only the same alcohol-laced cloth wrapped around the body. The difference: it's several thousand pesos more expensive - and it's GREEN (because of the food coloring put in the alcohol. But the insecure wives don't know this of course.)

Alex reveals that when he first joined the beauty center and underwent training, he thought he would learn about medical terms and things like that. Instead the training focused on how to relate to customers - i.e. how to entice them to get several treatments even if they do not need to lose excess weight, how to convince them that it must be their own fault (and not the beauty center's) in case no weight has been lost, etc.

Here are some everyday scenarios at the beauty center:

#1 A big-boned customer happens to drop by and gets the free check up. After taking her body measurements and BMI (body mass index), the customer is told that she borders obesity. The beauty center's personnel tell her to take a series of body wrap treatments to help her slim down in no time. The customer hesitates when she discovers how expensive it is. "I have to tell my husband first," she says. The beauty center's personnel coos: "No need to tell your husband ma'am. Take the body wrap treatment to surprise him!" (Alex says there was one case when a husband did find out and got so angry at the wife for wasting so much money that they ended up getting a divorce.)

#2 While a customer undergoes the body-wrap treatment, the beauty center's personnel on duty discreetly goes through the customer's handbag to check out her credit cards. You see, it's company policy to charge a client her credit card's worth - even if she doesn't really need to lose that much weight. Meaning to say, the kind of treatment/s that the beauty center's personnel will recommend depends on whether a customer owns a diamond credit card, a gold credit card, and so on.

#3 The beauty center's endorses are beautiful movie stars who are about to give birth. Their "before" and "after" pictures are prominently displayed in one of the country's leading newspapers. But you see, Alex explains, women who have given birth are naturally fatter even after having given birth. But it's also expected that these women lose much of the baby fat after their babies come out. Especially movie stars who are pressured to look good all the time. The movie stars' slimming down has more to do with their own exercise and diet than with the body wrap thing. Take note that the beauty center does not pay the movie stars for their endorsement but instead gives them free body wrap treatments. There are movie star endorses who do not avail of any treatment. Alex muses that they're probably just enjoying the free exposure in the newspapers.
Dear blog readers, don't ever think I'm making up any of this. Everything is true. I'm just lucky that Alex, the source of all this mind-blowing information, is not just a dissatisfied client but an employee of the beauty center in question. What I find so admirable about Alex is that even though he was earning some 200,000 pesos a month, he was so bothered by the deceit that he didn't mind leaving. His foreign bosses tried to coax him into changing his mind: "Don't take your job so personally," they told him, "just think about it as work." They even had Alex billeted in a luxury hotel for six months to let him get used to the good life. It apparently didn't work. I hope Alex's story will inspire others in similar situations act as honorably as him.

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