Uncle John told us he just doesn’t get all these new fads, so we told him to go pet his pet rock.
BAGEL HEADS
This “beauty treatment” fad got its start in Tokyo dance clubs in 2009. Using disposable syringes, teenagers inject saline solution (a common hydrating fluid) into their foreheads. A few moments later, the saline disfigures the forehead, creating a large, bulbous growth with an indentation in the middle. In other words, it looks like a giant bagel (or possibly a tumor) growing out of the forehead. Food coloring is sometimes added to the saline to turn the “bagel” green or blue. Thankfully, it’s not permanent—the bulge deflates in about a day.
IKEA sells modern-looking furniture that’s very popular with the young and hip. So popular, in fact, that some can’t wait to get home to enjoy IKEA merchandise. In Sacramento in 2008, a small group of young people began holding “dinner parties” inside an IKEA store, and the fad has since caught on at locations around the U.S. After dining on lingonberry jam and meatballs in the store’s Swedish-themed cafeteria, partiers retire to the living-room furniture displays to play board games. IKEA managers don’t seem to mind—the partygoers are paying customers, after all, and the publicity doesn’t hurt.
In a trend that’s taken off around Brooklyn, New York, college-age men and women get a permanent tattoo of a tiny handlebar mustache on one side of their index finger. Why? When they hold it up to their face, above the lip, it looks like they have a tiny, silly mustache. (Superbad star Jonah Hill showed his off on Saturday Night Live.) The one drawback to a finger mustache tattoo (other than actually having a finger mustache tattoo) is that the joke doesn’t work if you’re wearing gloves. Problem solved: You can now buy gloves preprinted with a mustache.
South Africa fad: Some boys in Cape Town have their upper front teeth extracted to look cool.