Soylent Green Eyeshadow Is People!

A Chinese cosmetics company, currently touting its wares in Europe, apparently makes its make-up using the skin of dead Chinese prisoners. Awesome.

Aside from the inherent irony of smearing corpse-juice all over yourself in order to look better, what's amazing to me is that the company is actually telling people this.

Agents for the firm, which could not be named for legal reasons, have told would-be customers that skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot is being used to develop collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments, the Guardian newspaper said following an undercover investigation.

"The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is 'traditional' and nothing to 'make such a big fuss about'," the daily alleged.

Um...what?

What the hell kind of fucked up place in China, anyhow? We've been making fun of them for so the wrong things - eating dogs and being dirty reds - but this is seriously gross.

It's traditional? Was this also the ancient, secret ingredient in Calgon?

Even more disgusting, UK scientists and doctors are worried that corpse-based make-ups could lead to...wince...infection.

It quoted that agent as saying: "A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus." This material, he said, was being bought from "bio tech" companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China.

Well, just look at it this way...No one would have loved that aborted fetus if it had grown up into a baby, so at least this way, it gets to be smeared across some woman's lips to make them appear lusher and more full of life. So it ain't all bad!

The weirdest thing about all this? It may be that the whole thing isn't even true.

The newspaper said that when formally approached the agent denied the company was using skin harvested from executed prisoners.

At the same time, it said the same person had already admitted this to an undercover researcher.

It quoted that agent as saying: "A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus." This material, he said, was being bought from "bio tech" companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China.

So, see, that would just mean that, in the research stage, some human tissue samples might have been used. That's way different than saying the make-up actually includes skin or biological matter.

But why would you want to spread a humor that your product includes dead people? Who, exactly, is the target market for this advertising campaign? That lucrative serial killer-and-cannibal demographic?

"Wear a dead man! It's the next best thing to killing them yourself or eating them!"