The Hilarious Face Bra

A new type of bra which is strapped on the face to reverse signs of ageing is the latest wacky beauty fad in America. So, does it really work? We asked three curious writers to test it out – with hilarious results…

Erin Kelly, 30, lives in North London with her husband Mike. She says:

The last time I looked, bras were for breasts, but the beauty industry is nothing if not excellent at finding new ways for us to hand over our hard-earned cash.

Often a new treatment comes along that is so bizarre that people will buy it for novelty value alone. I fear the face bra is one such gimmick. At £49.99 for a basic starter kit, this treatment doesn’t come cheap. Before wearing the face bra, I check out its website in anticipation.

The ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures are unconvincing: they show a fat man with a double chin in a checked shirt. The ‘after’ pictures are of a fat man’s double chin, but he has put on a new T-shirt.
It doesn’t quite claim to turn back the hands of time, but it does claim to soften the skin, reduce puffiness and shrink pores – all youthful attributes my skin is just about holding on to. For now.

I am keen on this – puffiness is my nemesis, and I’d love my bloaty cheeks and out-of-focus jawline to become slim and angular. So it’s with trembling hands that I open my face bra, the contraption that is about to change my life and give me back the baby-soft skin of my, um, babyhood.

The kit consists of three unlovely, surgical-smelling stretchy bandages, a plastic shower cap, a small plastic applicator bottle that looks like it should be filled with drinking water and attached to the side of a hamster’s cage, and a stout tub of white powder labelled simply ‘minerals’.

I mix these minerals with water, and soak the bandages in it. I must then place the plastic cap on my head and place the bandages on my face.

The first, a wonder-woman style headband, fastens around my forehead. The second is velcroed around my neck and chin, and a third goes over my head. I look at my face in the mirror.