It all started in July last year with one sentence in the American reality show The Kardashians. During a photo session with the family, main character Kim Kardashian told her mother: “I had a salmon sperm facial.” She didn’t say more than that, the rest of the item was about something completely different: the five sisters’ chances of survival in the wilderness.
But the beauty world had been listening. Especially since celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston and Miley Cyrus also said that they used this product to rejuvenate their skin. Salmon sperm became a hype. “Fillers are out, salmon sperm is in,” said singer Charli XCX.
Also the Inspection Service of Value (NPO 1) could not resist the wonderful trend. The consumer program team traveled to beauty clinics to witness and undergo the treatment. One went to the Spanish company where the drug is prepared. The highlight was the visit to a Brabant salmon farm where the breeder demonstrated how to milk the fish by rubbing its belly. Presenter Ersin Kiris smeared some semen on his forehead.
That doesn’t make much sense, say dermatologists. The Inspection Service of Value typically examines production processes, finds out exactly what is in products and whether this corresponds to what the manufacturer promises. But apparently they were so happy with this crazy product that they largely ignored the research. For example, I suspect that the salmon farmer who came into the picture is not involved in sperm production. I think he just raises salmon that is meant to be eaten. The key question: does this drug work was not asked.
So I dove into this rabbit hole again. The active substance is called polynucleotide, it is extracted from salmon DNA. Applying it to your face or wearing a mask, as the presenters do, is pointless, according to dermatologists. You must have the drug injected into the skin by a qualified doctor. Thorough research into the healing effect still needs to be done, but the first results are promising: polynucleotide indeed stimulates the skin to rejuvenate itself. Trout sperm is also possible.
It is pricey, 350 euros per session. The active substance costs 36 euros per gram – more expensive than keta, cheaper than coke. I was also concerned about the fish. That salmon farm looked horrible: tens of thousands of large fish are locked up in cramped tanks their entire lives. While they love to travel so much. At the Inspection service the farmer was unable to milk the salmon, so he cut it open. Animals were harmed in the making of this film! Some dermatologists point out alternative skin remedies that do not require animals to suffer.
Mother-in-law Monique
If you look through your eyelashes, we also have a kind of Kardashians in the Netherlands: the Hanslers. Now that the Meilandjes have stopped, we can follow this family weekly on SBS6. They had a B&B in Austria and moved to the Spanish coast in the reality series to start a tapas bar. The star attraction is mother Monique, a bossy, impossible woman who cannot let go of her son Mike and makes her daughter-in-law Denise’s life miserable. At least, that was especially true in the first episode. In the second and third episodes she behaved reasonably and the program immediately became quite boring.
However, daughter-in-law Denise has given the series a special dynamic by revealing in the press that Mike has long since broken up and that she was mentally abused by “mother-in-law” Monique. In weekly magazine Private she depicted her love affair as a parade of red flags, all of which she ignored. Out of fear of the Spanish labor inspectorate, Monique locked her daughter-in-law in the kitchen of the tapas bar, according to Denise.
The result of these plot spoilers is that disaster tourists like me will watch the series in the hope that Cinderella will finally be locked up and expelled. But that’s a long way from happening, and we may never see it. Emotionally, viewers have to make do with the decline of the old dog Sascha, who keeps the family awake with his coughing fits. You can spray and smear all you want, the deterioration continues.
NEW: Give this item as a gift
As an NRC subscriber you can subscribe every month 10 items give as a gift to someone without an NRC subscription. The recipient can read the article directly, without a paywall.
The journalistic principles of NRC