Now your kid can dress up as… porridge girl? Photo / Supplied
Now your kid can dress up as… porridge girl? Photo / Supplied
The carrot tan
It is indeed a thing. Well, it is on the edges of TikTok, so I’m not really sure if it counts. But this is not Young and Dumb’s first dalliance with skin enhancements. “Brown as a berry” was really burnt to a crisp, lathered up with coconutoil to hasten the tropical tan. Actual skin cancer was a downer on all that and bronzer was the go. Suzanne Paul made her fortune with Natural Glow and self-tanning went big in the UK, where half the women were the shade of Uluru. The sunbed was in the mix then too. Modern tans are sprayed on while wearing a paper thong in a stand-up tent, for most of us only for weddings or big birthdays.
We always knew about the carrot tan, but it was before juicers and social media, so it never really took off. Now beauty influencers and nobodies are spreading the word – eating carrots is the way to get a natural sun-kissed tan without needing to be in the sun. Three large carrots a day will apparently change your “natural skin undertone” . TikTokers even claim it protects you from the sun. Which is classic TikTok misinformation (like when young women were told the rhythm method of contraception was safe as! TBC it’s not). Carrots contain beta-carotene which causes the vegetable’s orangey hue, and it doesn’t hurt to binge on them because it’s an antioxidant, but it’s not a sunscreen. The result from one woman who tried it for 4 weeks? “The shade was not as brown as the tan you get from the sun, but rather orange.” Science says excessive consumption of beta-carotene can cause carotenemia, where the skin turns slightly yellowish – the jaundice glow. Pretty.
When a typo makes you queasy
When a typo makes you queasy. Photo / Supplied
No really, I AM in the wrong room
“A work colleague had to present at a conference, so he signed up for an evening course for public speaking. He went along and soon realised he was in an AA meeting. He got up and said he’d got the wrong room, but he said he could tell that people didn’t believe him and thought he was just not ready to commit yet – and gave him pitying and knowing looks as he left.”
Aren’t you glad you live in New Zealand?
A supermarket in Austria was evacuated last week after staff spotted what they believe was a Brazilian wandering spider, also known as a banana spider. The 10cm spider was discovered when staff opened a box of bananas. The excruciatingly painful bites from these venomous arachnids can cause rapid heartbeat, diarrhoea and priapism – a prolonged erection that can last hours. Interestingly, researchers are studying the venom as a possible new treatment for erectile dysfunction.
