The incredible shrinking Bellini
Big news! I just had a VelaShape treatment. According to the literature, “VelaShape contours, shapes and slims the body by improving cellulite and reducing circumference in as few as four treatment sessions.” Or in my case, 400 sessions. VelaShaping is ideal for women who have just given birth, but it’s also ideal for body-conscious gay men. Clinical trials show an average post-treatment reduction of 0.5 to three inches. So it is with some excitement that I head to Skin Vitality at 11 Yorkville Ave to get VelaShaped.

My clinician, Angelica, tells me she can’t do any VelaShaping on hairy parts. That eliminates most of my body. “Why not do the love handles on my back?” I suggest, so she flips me over and pours some gel on me. Then she turns on the VelaShape machine, which looks like a big vacuum cleaner. She picks up a glowing wand and passes it over the areas in question. The wand simultaneously vacuums the skin, shoots radio waves through it, massages fat tissue and generates heat. The effect is not unlike a Swedish deep-tissue massage, but it’s way more intense. When it is over, the skin on my lower back is lobster red and glowing. Yes, it looks smoother and tighter, after just one treatment. Parts of me are now very attractive.

fab editor Matt Thomas comes along for his own treatment, and he shares his thoughts on the process: “It’s like getting a hickey all over the area being treated, but it’s one hell of a hot mouth and VelaShape doesn’t get tired. I wouldn’t put it near anything that dangles, though.” Sound advice, but let’s be honest: dangling parts seldom need more manipulation than they already receive.

Skin Vitality’s medical consultant, Nikki Tourlos, recommends multiple treatments, usually from six to eight. The clinic also provides a nutritionist, as healthy eating is a big part of what makes the treatment work. She shows me a series of “before” and “after” photographs. Some of the women in the “before” pics have ricotta-cheese asses, but the “after” pictures show noticeable improvement. She doesn’t discuss what the treatment would cost; apparently individual needs vary.

Nikki tells me that Skin Vitality offers bipolar radio frequencies and light-energy treatments, ideal for eliminating freckles, sun spots, rosacea, spider veins and age spots. They’re also good for hair removal and skin tightening. In addition, the clinic offers a combination of Botox and Juvéderm facial filler, which they call a soft lift. The best thing is these procedures are all non-surgical, non-invasive and require no recuperation time.

So, haggard reader, do yourself a favour and get thy ass over to Skin Vitality. Nikki was nice enough to give me three referral cards, which offer a $100 gift certificate with your first visit. If you want one, just email me.

Now that my lower back is toned and taut, I can finally sit back, relax and read yet another salacious Hollywood biography by Darwin Porter. His books on classic screen luminaries Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn left my tongue hanging. Yes, they had raunchy sex lives, and yes, their legendary love affairs (with Lauren Bacall and Spencer Tracy, respectively) were mostly manufactured, more lore than love. I’m fascinated to read that Hepburn’s hobby was breaking into people’s homes, a practice she continued well into her stardom, and that Bogart had a lifelong aversion to the word “shit.”

Porter has juice on practically every classic movie star ever. It is now impossible for me to watch Gone with the Wind and not think about how Leslie Howard liked to leave bite marks on his female conquests. Oh, Ashley. For those of us who cannot get enough celebrity sleaze, Porter has also started a gossip blog called Dirty Laundry. You can subscribe to it on the website of his publisher, Blood Moon Productions.

Tighter skin and dirtier gossip. This is the life.

Info: skinvitality.ca, bloodmoonproductions.com

More Bellini at paulbellini.blogspot.com
paul@fabmagazine.com