Inside a Big Idea - Shizuka Bernstein's Geisha Facial - CNBC
DONNY DEUTSCH: There’s nothing more exhilarating than seeing someone going for their dream and watching it come true. You’re about to meet Shizuka Bernstein. Her dreams are coming true and she’s doing it—get this—with bird poop!
SHIZUKA: I grew up in Tokyo, Japan. Coming to United States was my dream. I started to think about coming here when I was in middle school, so it’s unbelievable. I want to bring Japanese culture to my practice and I tried to find ingredients from Japan such as pearl, green tea, and sake. So we serve green tea after the treatment with green tea cookies and offer a Japanese kimono to wear.
Most Japanese mothers—typical Japanese mothers—want their daughters to have white, porcelain skin. One day, I remembered what my mother said to me about nightingale droppings. My mother told me that traditional kabuki actors and geisha couldn’t remove their thick makeup easily. I suppose they tried everything, and one day they tried bird poop and it cleansed their skin very well. So I started to research, and I found out that some ingredients in nightingale droppings—their natural enzymes—break down the dead skin cells. It’s a UV sterilized powder…not like bringing poop from a bird cage.
When my mother visited me, after I became an aesthetician, I gave her a facial and she was so proud.
