Shadowing Practice: I Got A $450 Celebrity Contouring Facial - Learn English Speaking with Video
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- Hello friends and welcome to another video.
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This week I'm gonna be getting a Hollywood contouring facial.
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That's right, Daddy Bezos is gonna have to make some room in his space phallus 'cause I'm about to be contoured to the gods and back.
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Now, the past couple of years have been kind of, well, you know, and like many of us, I have chosen buying skincare products and devices as a source of stress relief.
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I've got a gua sha, I've got a microcurrent thingy, I've got an ice contouring cube.
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Still not sure if they're doing much, but I like 'em.
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- I also have a mask for my hoo-has.
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24 karat breast masks.
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- I got this skincare one for $500.
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I honestly don't even really know what it does.
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- And while I was researching this bizarre skin gym where you basically get professionally slapped for hundreds of dollars, I stumbled upon what I now call the skincare battles of 2019, a series of dueling videos between Refinery29 and Beauty Insider where they sent their producers to ever increasing levels of fancy salons to get luxurious facials, like the gemstone facial, the three hour facial, the Rihanna facial, the 16 step facial, the $1,000 facial, the organic facial, another $1,000 facial, the scary spatula facial, the bubble facial, the rainbow facial, the aforementioned workout facial, the power washing facial, whatever this one is, the foot facial, the golden facial.
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I really wanna do this one.
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The Singaporean facial. I also wanna do this one.
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The VS Angel facial.
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I wanted to do this one but it looks like it doesn't exist anymore.
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And on and on and on.
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- How's in going in there, Nico?
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- I'm good.
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- Now we can bounce things off of your face.
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- And after all of this, I thought, why is my face so un-facialed?
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Don't answer that.
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But why can't I also have boujee skincare treatments done to my face?
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I want my face to be rubbed also.
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And so I decided to pursue boujee skincare treatment and settled on a facial that I wanted to also get: the $450 contouring facial celebrities swear by, which features both fanciness and many odd looking devices.
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So let's try to get it.
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Now this particular facial is done by Biba de Sousa, a celebrity esthetician and skincare guru who has had A-list celebrity clients like Miley Cyrus, Emily Blunt and Billie Eilish swear by her work.
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During the pandemic, when she had to shut down her practice, she pivoted her focus from skincare services to launching a line of luxury skincare products.
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So for now, she only really does this facial for her A-list clients, but after asking super nicely and explaining to her my fancy facial envy, she was willing to squeeze us in at her top secret studio in West Hollywood.
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So when we were in LA a couple of months ago, we dropped by.
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I feel dry. Now my skin actually wasn't loving the dramatic transition from Raleigh to dry LA.
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LA dried me out.
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- Dude, you should see my hair.
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- I don't really get facials regularly, let alone $450 contouring celebrity facials.
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I gotta take my clothes off.
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- Are you naked?
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- A little bit.
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- Half naked? - Half naked.
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- Top naked.
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- Yes. So besides us just being able to see what a service like this is actually like...
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I look like an egg.
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Like I just look like an egg.
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- I think you're gonna become an egg right now.
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- Maybe Biba could also help me overcome some of the SpongeBob at Sandy's house level dryness that was occurring on my face.
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- Water.
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- Yeah. - Here I am.
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- Sorry, Biba.
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We've made like an obstacle course for you specifically.
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- That's okay. Well, hello everybody. I'm Biba de Sousa.
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I am an aesthetician.
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- Hi, Biba.
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- Hi. I am going to demonstrate my Meta Facial that I trademarked a couple years.
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- Now Biba considers this her kitchen sink facial, which is meant to address the entire spectrum of skin concerns that a client may have.
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- So I am going to just take a look at your skin.
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- I have to tell you, Biba, I feel a little dry.
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- I can say yay yay yay yay yay.
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But you're not dry, you're dehydrated.
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You have oily skin and you have very delicate skin, very prone to redness, so I would say that you're not hydrating properly.
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Just bear with me and I'll fix it.
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- All right. We'll fix it.
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- We're fixin' it.
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- Also we have a puppy here.
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- We have puppy. This is Kiki.
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- Okay.
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- Hi, Kiki.
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- Not part of the treatment, but very pleasant.
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- She's so cute.
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I would've been fine with Kiki doubling as a weighted blanket.
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Oh my god. - Oh my god.
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- Actually, I love it.
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But for the purposes of the treatment, we decided to go dog-less.
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Hi. Now Biba started off the treatment by cleansing my face, which is pretty standard procedure.
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- You're really well maintained.
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- Oh, thank you.
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I don't really know what I'm doing, but I try.
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- Right, right. You're succeeding.
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Your skin looks good, it's just a little dehydrated.
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- But she was like painting the cleanser on my face with a super soft paint brush, which was a first for me.
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I like this brush. - Thank you.
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- I'm into the brush.
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And then, before applying any more products, she smothered me with an aromatic towel with lavender oil on it.
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Oh yeah. I like lavender oil. - Mm-hm.
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- I've decided just now. - She's a talker.
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- I'm like literally a talking towel.
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- Yeah.
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- Now, we're going to do our lymphatic drainage.
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- Great. Now lymphatic drainage is kind of a big focus of Biba's Meta Facial.
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- So I'm brushing on a cream that is going to allow us to glide over your skin.
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- Yeah, it feels pretty thick.
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It's definitely part of the contouring element as it's supposed to help de-bloat your face.
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- So here, we're gonna start right here.
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- Whoa.
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- And we're gonna start opening your lymph nodes.
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- Whoa. Okay, brief science time.
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The lymphatic system is a bodily process, complimentary to your circulatory system, that clears away infection, keeps your fluids in balance, removes cellular waste and creates a fluid known as lymph.
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- And it doesn't have a pump, so how the lymph moves is through movement, breathing, exercise and massage.
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So this is a mechanical lymphatic drainage.
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- So the idea is that if you have swelling due to an excess amount of lymph or a lymph node blockage, Biba can use this suction machine to basically lift the lymph up and push it towards different collection ports in the body so it can drain.
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- And it's going to remove the puffiness from the facial area and it feels really, really good.
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- Sorry if that's wrong.
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I haven't taken biology since 2007.
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- Saf, can you feel that every time it pulsates?
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- It feels so crazy.
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It feels like, like tiny like fire cupping, like it's, like, lifting my face up.
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- Mm-hm.
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- I was gonna say it's like a chin breast pump kind of. - It's certainly suckin' it out.
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- Oh my god, the breast pump. I don't know.
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- Overall, even though it was kind of a foreign sensation, I thought the lymphatic sucker actually felt really good.
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- You're a perfect candidate for this because you came dehydrated.
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- Oh, great. Well good thing.
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Good thing I didn't drink enough water. Good thing.
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- Well. - Well.
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- Well. - I know it was meant to be moving lymph around, but my favorite part of it was just the feeling of like tension relief.
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- Yeah, you can see this side is already flatter.
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- I'm just an egg getting sucked.
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- That's it, Safiya.
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- Safiya often feels like an egg.
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- As it was kind of lifting parts of my skin up that never really gets stretched.
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- It feels good, right?
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- It feels so good around the eye.
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It feels like you're, like, lifting my eyeball up.
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Especially with the little detail sucker that she used around the crevices of my face.
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How are we doing on the sucking front?
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Are we still suckin'?
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- No. So we're going to switch.
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I'm going to just change my gloves and we're going to do the gua sha.
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- I feel pretty drained.
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- I'm feeling I want my skin sucked off my face, too. Okay, how do I sneak in front of that machine?
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- Oops, I've fallen in front of the lymphatic drainage machine and I can't get up.
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The dog is sleeping on me and I can't get up. So the next step was the gua sha massage.
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- All righty, so this is the gua sha board.
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This is one of the shapes that are out there.
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- Now I've heard of gua sha before.
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It's a traditional Chinese medicine that has become very popular on TikTok.
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It feels nice and cool.
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Did you have it in the fridge?
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- Nope.
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- Oh, it was just naturally cold?
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- It's just the rose quartz.
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- And I think originally was meant to improve ailments by stimulating key pressure points on the face and body.
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- You see, I'm not like applying like a hard pressure because your skin will get bruised.
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- It has a wide range of applications, but for the purposes of this facial and for the purposes of most TikTokers, it was meant to help finish what the lymphatic pump had started and reduce inflammation in the face.
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- Basically, we're going to follow certain meridians.
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Not to bore people, we're just like sweeping towards the outer face and you see we've just drained that fluid and now we're continuing to drain to drain the fluid.
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- As well as help smooth and unravel any fascia crinkling.
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Fascia is the connective tissue that surrounds your muscles.
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- You know that silver skin on the meat?
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- Yeah. Oh, yeah. - That's fascia.
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- On meat. Mm.
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And the logic here is that your fascia can crinkle, or bunch, so the gua sha can help iron it out like wrinkles on a shirt.
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- Fascia works like, kind of like venetian blinds.
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It starts to like sag and the fascia, like, crinkles, right?
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So you can do a lot of lifting.
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- After holstering her gua sha, Biba doubled down by going in with a general fascia muscle massage.
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- There's a big muscle here, right here.
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It, like, looks literally like a bib.
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- Aiming to loosen up some of the bigger muscles that can cause some of that crinkling we mentioned.
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- Do you feel it?
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- Whatever's happening, I like, so I think maybe yes, I can feel it.
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And after trying to lengthen out the fascia of the platysma muscle, she moved on to my jaw.
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- The strongest muscle on our body is said to be masseter muscle, which is the chewing muscle, right?
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And this is where actually the tension happens.
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And, oh yeah, here.
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- Yeah.
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After starting off pretty nice and gentle with the gua sha and the neck lengthening...
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Ah, ah. Ah. - I'm not gonna hurt you, but I'm just going to stretch it a little because it's going to feel better.
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- The jaw demanded some serious ass kicking and Biba seemed to revel in trying to help me work out my kinks.
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Whoa, oh, ah.
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- Okay, so now we know you have a tense jaw muscle.
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- Whoa. - It's okay.
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- That was crazy. - It's okay.
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- Oh. On the jaw, nose, cheeks, you name it.
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I have like American Girl doll teeth right now.
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And after a fair amount of massaging and stretching...
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Egg vibes only increase. It was time for us to do a brief extractions intermission before our grand finale.
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All right, Ty, I don't think I can actually hold this while this is happening.
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Now I do notoriously have a bit of poor congestion/blackheads on my nose.
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- I'm only going to just pick up some of them, like you just have some superficial clogging.
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- So Biba wanted to see if she could squeeze a few of them out.
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Ah Yeah. - I'm so sorry.
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- No, it's okay. It's good.
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I always prefer to be on the giving end of this treatment rather than the receiving end of it.
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- Yeah, I've actually only ever had Saf do this to me. - But I think Biba enjoyed herself.
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- Oh, this is so satisfying.
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- Sorry if you guys can't see much.
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We'll figure out how to film it better for next time.
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- So, we're going to freshen up your skin with a toner. - Great.
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- I'm gonna take this off. - Whoa!
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- It's thyme, basil.
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- Basil, yep. - Mm-hm.
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- I smell basil.
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I'm becoming one with a caprese.
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That that was a stupid joke. - That's probably her best joke yet.
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- She also added a lip moisturizer.
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- I'm just going to apply some of the lip treatment.
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- Yeah, I need that.
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Before moving on to the microcurrent machine.
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- So we're going to now get into the beautifying.
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- Oh, now? - Now. - What was happening before?
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Those were draining.
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The draining. - The draining.
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That was like the prep.
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- Now micro current devices have become pretty popular nowadays as well.
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I have a small one at home myself, but Biba's is the real deal, big bad version.
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- We're gonna just do the lifting part here.
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- Mm.
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- And now we have to keep for like 16 counts.
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- And the idea behind microcurrent treatments is that they administer low levels of electrical currents to your facial muscles to help lift, reposition and tone them.
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- Blink twice if you can feel anything, Saf.
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- Mm-mm. No, I don't feel anything.
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Should I feel something? - Mm-mm.
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- Biba specifically mentions 32 different facial muscles that she needs to pay attention to in her Meta Facial.
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How do you feel about Facebook moving in on your branding?
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- Ah, ah, ah, I trademarked it first.
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- They can have the Metaverse but not the Meta Facial? - Yeah.
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- But besides lifting, microcurrent treatments are also supposed to help circulation in the face as well as boost collagen and elastin production.
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- This is also an opportunity for Biba to pin Safiya's mouth shut.
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- Mm.
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Mm-hm. Hm. Though I started off not being able to feel much, there were a couple more intense zaps in sensitive areas that felt like a little buzzing to me.
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Mm, I feel that one, too.
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A little vibrating almost.
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- Mm-hm.
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Just like a little pulsing. - Yeah.
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And after a round with the two pronged microcurrent prods, we moved on to the big kahunas.
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The one that has like the four?
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- The fork. You're getting the forks.
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- Yeah! - I just have to assemble it.
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- Does it look ominous? - Yeah, it does.
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It looks great.
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- I asked Biba specifically for the fork because I saw the fork.
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I contemplated the fork.
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I wanted the fork and now I'm getting the fork and I'm very excited.
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These larger ones are obviously pretty similar to the other prods.
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Oh. - So they're coming.
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- Oh. - So we're just going to grab this muscle.
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- Oh. - Feels nice?
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- Yeah. But I think they're just a bit more intense.
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Ooh yeah, I can feel it.
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And perhaps better at grabbing larger bits of the facial muscles.
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- It looks like the thing that hatches the eggs in Jurassic Park.
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- I love Jurassic Park. I'm just like so surprised that we already did don't have it.
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- Dinosaurs? Yes.
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- Same, Biba. Same.
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- We all thought 2022 was gonna be different.
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- I just thought the forks looked cool.
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- You forked out.
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- I got forked.
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- You got forked.
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Okay, so let me just...
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- And once we were done with the microcurrent treatment...
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- I think that, I'm not trying to say that one session's all you need, but I think that Safiya is looking quite radiant right now.
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- I think so, too.
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- Oh thanks, guys.
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- It was time to slather some SPF on me and exit the Meta Facial-verse.
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So are we done, Biba?
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- We're done. - Oh my god.
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I have risen.
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- Let me see.
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It looks like a different face, right?
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- I think you look good, Saf.
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- It looks so good.
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It's so calm.
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- Now overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my celebrity contouring facial.
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It was very fun to actually experience these treatments that I'd seen so much about online.
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I just got forked by Biba.
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In terms of sensation, my favorite parts were definitely the chin breast pump, which felt weirdly relaxing, and the fascia massage.
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Ah! Which was somewhat painful but in a good way, Like Biba was really getting into the nitty gritty.
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I feel good overall.
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I feel super massaged.
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I feel like rubbed and just, like, drained.
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I'm somewhat naked so I have to get dressed and then see how my face looks.
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And in terms of visual impact.
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All right, I'm dressed and alive.
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I do think I see a little bit of a difference with the de-puffing and rehydrating.
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Obviously you can't really have huge effects in just one visit, but I think me coming in off of traveling and being dry gave us something to work with.
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A good starting point, if you will.
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One day later.
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Do I look drained?
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- You do kind of, actually.
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- Or did I already pump all the fluids back into the face?
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- Re-lymph?
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- Yeah. But overall, visual effects aside, I felt some serious stress relief after letting expert Biba work her magic.
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I feel very, you said trance-like.
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I feel trance-like.
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- Right, right, right.
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- I feel a little bit like floating.
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- Right. - Floating through the air.
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- Astral planing?
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- No, it's called the alpha state.
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- Oh.
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- Like you just get into deep relaxation, so it's alpha.
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- Dude, I'm in the alpha state right now.
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So after being contoured to the gods and back, I opt not to get on the space penis with Daddy Bezos, but instead to go to a remote island with Biba and clone some dinosaurs.
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I don't know, Biba, I think your take that we should have Jurassic Park by now is a very good take.
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- Yeah. We all agree.
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- We all agree.
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- Everyone in the room was just nodding.
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- Yeah, we should have that.
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Yeah. - Yeah.
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You know what I would die to see? Pterodactyls.
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- Yeah.
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Dude, same. - The flying guys?
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- I would die if I saw it.
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I mean die in a good way. - Yeah.
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- I would have died and went to heaven.
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- So thanks so much to Biba for letting us come by and film at her mystery location.
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Thank you so much, Biba.
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This was so fun.
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I feel- - You're very welcome.
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- So very massaged and that was the goal, so.
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- And you got forked. - Yeah, and I got forked.
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- Forked by Biba.
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- I need a t-shirt that says that.
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- That could be some merch, Biba.
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Forked by Biba.
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- Thank you guys so much for watching.
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If you liked that video, make sure to sha-mash that like button and you wanna see more videos like this, make sure to sha-mash that subscribe button.
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Here are our various short form and social media handles and here's our merch website.
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And with that, I will see you guys a-next time.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, learners will practice listening and speaking skills through a transcript from a fun and engaging video about a celebrity contouring facial. By exploring the dialogue, you will enhance your vocabulary related to skincare treatments and improve your fluency through the shadowing technique. This method involves mimicking the video's speakers to develop precise pronunciation and intonation, making it an effective approach for IELTS speaking practice.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Contouring facial - A beauty treatment designed to enhance facial features.
- Esthetician - A skincare specialist who provides various beauty treatments.
- Skincare products - Items used to improve skin health and appearance.
- Boujee - A slang term describing something luxurious or extravagant.
- Skincare envy - The feeling of wanting the skincare routines or products that others have.
- A-list celebrities - Famous individuals who are widely recognized in the entertainment industry.
- Luxury skincare - High-end products and treatments that often come with a significant price tag.
Practice Tips
To make the most out of this lesson and improve your speaking skills, try using the shadow speech technique while following along with the video. Here are some tips to effectively use this technique:
- Watch closely: Pay attention to how the speakers emphasize certain words and phrases. Notice their speed and natural pauses.
- Start slow: Repeat phrases just after the speaker says them. Don’t rush; ensure you mimic the tone and rhythm of speech.
- Record yourself: Use your phone or a recording device to capture your voice as you practice. Listening back will help you identify areas for improvement.
- Focus on intonation: Pay attention to how the speakers change their pitch and emphasize key ideas. This will help you sound more natural during IELTS speaking practice.
- Engage with the content: Try to relate the vocabulary to your own experiences. Discussing skincare routines or treatments with a friend can reinforce your learning.
By consistently applying the shadowing technique, not only will you enhance your speaking skills, but you'll also be able to express yourself more confidently in various contexts, including social conversations and formal interviews.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · has had · We've made |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be contoured · be rubbed · is done |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | facial, which is · face, which is · brush, which was |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.