| abstract
| - Women (and some men) put in a great deal of work and effort to constantly show their beautiful visages and bodies to the world. Seeing the behind the scenes process of becoming so beautiful -- for men -- is a terror right up there with running into your average masked slasher killer. The Cucumber Facial. Hair up in curlers. Girdles and corsets. Being Covered in Mud. Wrap treatments that turn one into a Bandage Mummy. Legs and/or armpits unshaved. Any man catching any woman in this pre-glamorous condition will be rooted to the spot, or run screaming. Occasionally, it is this horrifying for other women. This also includes seeing women without their makeup and other glamour acoutrements: wigs, false eyelashes, etc. Then there's the Truth in Television beauty rituals which can be really be horrifying in a non-comedic manner and can be, but aren't as often, Played for Drama:
* Painful: Tweezing, threading, sugaring, waxing, razoring, shaving. Piercing of the ears (and other body parts).
* Dangerous: Chemical skin and hair treatments. Relaxers. Some diets. Botox which is actually injecting botulism toxin into the skin. Skin lightening/bleaching. Tanning. The Brazilian Blowout, which contains formaldehyde.
* Deadly: Some chemical treatments. Surgeries like the lap band. The one undergoing the beauty treatments is almost Always Female, though when a man is in such a state, it's Played for Laughs. The Double Standard says it is unmanly to want/need such treatments to look good. Compare Women's Mysteries and Wondrous Ladies' Room for other female-only tropes that confuse and bewilder primitive males. Related to Cosmetic Catastrophe, where the results of the beauty treatment are terrifying. See Uncanny Valley Makeup for when cosmetics are applied in what is meant to be a normal manner but comes out being scary anyway. While the Cucumber Facial is portrayed as scary to look at with the cream covering the face and vegetable matter over the eyes, facials are in the main quite harmless, and often beneficial when done properly. Done improperly, they can remove layers of skin. Both the comedic and real versions of the trope tend toward Unfortunate Implications since they support the idea that women must do these rituals to be beautiful enough, and aren't thin enough/light enough/pretty enough as they are. They also reinforce that women have to go after a goal for a type of beauty that is pretty much not realistically attainable, and definitely not for all body types. The salon version of these treatments is usually more of a Women's Mysteries trope and usually part of a montage before She Cleans Up Nicely. The home version is almost always played for laughs, and more often than not goes horribly wrong -- especially if hair dye is involved. Lastly, although the trope is called Cosmetic Horror, it can and does include beauty treatments beyond the cosmetic (from corsets on outward) that induce horror when seen as part of the treatment, or just from what they do to the wearer. Examples:
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