Facial Rejuvenation Without Borders (FRWB) recently completed a two-week relief campaign for enemy combatants detained at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Group founder and spokesperson, Emily Shelton, described the visit as a “great success” and hopes to return there in the near future. Speaking from her summer home in Berkeley, California, she said, “Since these guys aren’t going anywhere soon, it would be good for us to go back once a year indefinitely.”
The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is home to what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld refers to as “terrorists” and “the worst of the worst”. In addition to that billing, Shelton adds that they also have the worst of the worst wrinkles she has ever seen. “Growing up and training in the desert really causes a lot of squinting and leads to nasty crows feet. It’s a real challenge.” She also spoke about treating the effects of emotional trauma that the inmates have incurred. “In my whole career, I have never seen such deep frown lines. It’s very intimidating to treat problem cases like these, but you just have to go back to your training and stay focused.”
The idea for going to Guantanamo came after Shelton saw news footage of prisoners in the yard. “Their faces were so gruff and haggard looking. Even through a thick beard you can tell when someone needs a lift and peel. Since I am also trained in herbal facial peels, I really wondered if there was a chance I could get over there and do some work.” Shelton commented. She contacted the founder of Zen-cupuncture, Shanti Dove-Anderson, who had a friend at the State Department and the ball was rolling. “The downside was that we had to form a non-profit to go in. That really killed our chances of a big money score. However we were banking on the publicity we would get and we weren’t disappointed! Now with the money were making from the CEU circuit, lectures, talk shows and news articles; the publicity has done more for our bottom line than we could have possibly imagined.” Shelton said.
Shelton and Dove-Anderson have joined forces behind Zen-cupuncture to train other acupuncturists in their methods and credit the publicity from their trip to Guantanamo as the key ingredient to their success. They have learned the lessons of Guantanamo and have plans to visit other key bases in the War On Terror, including secret detention centers in Eastern Europe, Diego Garcia Naval Base and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “A captive audience is key to patient compliance and good results. When we show our before and after pictures to both acupuncturists who want to learn our methods and clients who want to be more beautiful, they practically fall down handing over their cash!”
The similarities between the War On Terror and her self-dubbed “War On Wrinkles” weren’t lost to Shelton. “Terrorists hate our freedoms while wrinkles hate our beauty. Both terrorists and wrinkles are cruel and inhuman and must be stopped. They say at Guantanamo that they are fighting terrorism abroad so that we don’t have to fight it at home. Well, we’re learning how to treat wrinkles on terrorists abroad so that we can finally defeat them at home. What we do is allow the terrorists to give something back, which without us they couldn’t otherwise do. You could say that we pull the yin out of the yang of this situation.”
Money, publicity and self interest aside, Facial Rejuvenation Without Borders sees another reason to relieve the age and stress lines of military prisoners around the world. “It’s just nice to make a difference. These guys may never see the light of day again. But if they do, they’ll be ready for the cameras! They’ll be beautiful!”
Isn’t that what really matters?
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