You want to look extra spiffy tonight, so, in addition to your usual grooming and stylish outerwear, you have a professional piercer stick a two-hour saline drip into your forehead until it swells up like an infected spider bite. You press your finger into the swelling so it looks like a surgeon who didn't like you very much left his breakfast bagel sewn into your noggin.

Bagelheads.

Boing Boing showcased them yesterday but this fetish-y fad (or alleged fad) for having saline dripped into whatever body part you want to bulge like a goiter (but it's mostly for foreheads) has been around for awhile now. A Vice Style magazine's story on Ryoichi "Keroppy" Maeda credits the journalist/photographer with popularizing this particular body modification in Japan, though, it also says “body mod” is pretty taboo there.

The bagelhead look is temporary: the saline gets absorbed into your body and by the time you wake up you're back to normal ... or as normal as you could have been, to want your forehead to look like it's pregnant with a hamster. According to TheBagelheads.com, side effects include “possible infection, eyes swollen shut, headache, pressure and stretched skin.” The website also disputes that it's a “fad” at all, but fad, fetish or fluke, the Vice Style photos are not to be missed.

Alas, one person's cyst-like bulge is another's treasure. Maybe it's a great beauty tip for our junk-food culture. I haven't met a man yet who could pass up a Krispy Kreme.