The Latest Beauty Trend: Bagel Head

With tattoos, piercings, and implants being practically passe at this point, the newest trend in body modification is “bagel head,” in which a person looks as though a bagel is sitting on their forehead beneath their skin. The process uses a saline injection to form a swollen ball. A finger is then pressed into the swelling to create an indent to form the bagel look. And that’s it. There’s no other point to the whole thing, other than to wear a skin bagel. It’s also not permanent, as the body absorbs the saline 16 – 24 hours after the injection, and all swelling goes down.

“Bagel head” and other body mods were featured on last night’s episode of Taboo that focused on “extreme bodies.” One woman profiled, Mary Jose, a mother of four, quit her job as a lawyer to begin a drastic makeover that included head-to-toe tattoos, facial implants, piercings, an teeth filed into fangs. She’s now known as “Vampire Woman.” Another woman, Elaine Davidson, is the most pierced woman in the world, with over 8000 holes in her body—she has 500 piercings in her genitals alone.

But the show also featured women who make a living off their “extreme bodies”—female body builders. There’s a subset of these women who earn $500 an hour in one-on-one sessions with muscle fetishists who have a kink for getting their asses kicked by strong women. They stressed, however, that they do not have sex with these men. They just arm wrestle.