Belly button stickers are apparently all the rage in China these days, as a growing number of women are reportedly using them as a way of making their legs appear longer.

There is a curious beauty trend going on in China right now. Young women are paying 5-10 RMB ($0.70 to $1.40) for sheets of temporary tattoos designed to look like belly buttons. The stickers are usually placed a few centimeters above the real navel, which is then concealed with skirts or pants, in order to make the torso seem shorter and the legs, longer. It sounds pretty dumb, but belly button sticker manufacturers are struggling to keep up with demand, and social media platforms like Xiaohongshu are being flooded with video tutorials on how to use the temporary tattoos and clips showing their effects on the wearer.

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Vietnam’s latest cosmetic procedure trend has people injecting hyaluronic acid fillers into their ear lobes in order to achieve elongated lobes like those of Maitreya, aka Laughing Buddha, considered a good long charm.

Vietnamese media recently featured a beauty salon in Quang Ninh where an increasing number of people have been requesting ear lobe fillers in order to change their fortunes. They believe that by increasing the size of their ear lobes to emulate those of Maitreya, a symbol of wealth and good fortune, they will attract prosperity into their lives. Advertisements for this procedure have reportedly become very popular on social media as well, with many salons promising fast and painless procedures to superstitious customers.

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Chinese media recently covered a shocking beauty trend that allegedly has young girls getting nerves in their legs severed so that their calves appear slimmer.

It’s crazy the extreme lengths some people will go in the name of beauty, or at least their idea of beauty. Take for example this new and disturbing trend reportedly dubbed “calf blocking”, which essentially has young, healthy girls getting “less important” nerves in their legs surgically severed to permanently atrophy their calf muscles, so that their lower legs appear slimmer and straighter.

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Knee makeup isn’t really a thing, but a century ago it was the hottest trend in the beauty industry. It started out as knee rouging and eventually turned into full-on knee painting.

Fashion has always been a reflection of the spirit of the times, and the knee makeup and painting of the 1920s was no exception. The “flappers” were wearing skirts shorter than ever before (hemlines just under the knee were the ’20s version of a miniskirt), they were rolling down their stocking bellow the knee or giving up on them altogether, and knee rouging became just another way to attract attention to an area of the female body that had never been as visible before. Women of the generation had a number of blush formulas to choose from including cream, powder, and liquid formulas, which they used for an added “look at me” effect.

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Called ‘devil lips’, or ‘octopus lips’, a cosmetic procedure that allegedly involves inserting filler into the edge of the upper lip to give it a wavy look is getting a lot of attention on Instagram these days.

No one knows exactly when and where this unusual beauty trend originated, but some sources claim that the procedure was pioneered by Russian plastic surgeon Emelian Braude. One thing’s for sure, though, the unusual lip contouring technique has been raising eyebrows on social media, especially in Russia, where it’s supposedly the most popular. But before you pick up the phone and call your favorite plastic surgeon about the devil lips procedure, you should know that no one is yet clear if it actually exists. Some plastic surgeons say that getting this wavy contour through lip fillers alone is impossible, and attempting to to do can be very dangerous.

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Thailand’s fascination with skin whitening treatments is well known, but while most people opt to have the most visible parts of their bodies whitened, an increasing number of men are undergoing special laser procedures on the dark parts of their groin region.

News of the “penis whitening” craze in Thailand reached the Western world a couple of days ago, after photos of men undergoing the unusual procedure at the Lelux aesthetic hospital outside of Bangkok went viral on social media. They showed a number of men lying down on a medical chair while hospital staff operated the “Pikachu laser” on their groin region. If that name sounds a bit strange, you should know that the popular Pokemon is slang for “penis” in Thailand.

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A peculiar beauty trend has taken off in East Asia, and it is proving to be cause for concern. Women are inserting a small set of pegs, called “nose lifter”, into their nostrils in order to make their nose look more European. Western noses are apparently considered more attractive as they’re sharper and pointier.

The Nose Lifter set consists of two curved silicone pegs, measuring two to three centimeters long, and a hook for adjusting. The pegs are inserted into the nostril and then adjusted to a 45-degree angle. The result is an instant nose job without invasive and expensive surgery. The trend started two years ago in South Korea but has since spread across East Asia after being adopted by prominent YouTube beauty vloggers like Raiza Contawi.

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Stella Sironen, a young makeup artist from Finland, recently shared a photo of her with her eyebrows split down the middle like bird feathers, joking that she was starting a new beauty trend. Little did she know that the internet would end up taking her seriously.

Sironen, whose makeup skills have earned her over 48,000 followers on Instagram, posted the viral photos of her sporting feathered brows a few days ago, crediting her friend @leevitu for coming up with the trick while brushing her eyebrows. He apparently used a glue stick to split the eyebrows down the middle horizontally and brush the eyebrows up and down to achieve that aviary look. As Stella later admitted, she jokingly captioned the first photo with the text “so i’m starting this new brow trend please recreate it and wear it everyday and dont forget to tag me like and subscribe and hit that bell button.” Only people apparently didn’t get the joke.

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While some women cover their faces with thick layers of foundation to cover up natural freckles, others are apparently getting them tattooed. Yup, freckles are in, and some people would even go under the needle to get them.

Freckle tattooing is reportedly one of the fastest growing beauty treatments available today. Similar to microblading, an eyebrow enhancing procedure, freckle tattooing involves the use of pigments to ink freckle-like dots onto a person’s face that eventually blend in with the client’s skin tone. As with any tattoo, there is some inevitable swelling, but it subsides after a few months, and the initial dark coloring of the freckles fades to a light brown.

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