"In Venezuela, 17 women have died in the past 12 months as a result of liquid silicone buttock injections."

"The procedure, which according to Jesus Pereira, the president of the Veneuzelan Plastic Surgeons Association, an estimated 30 percent of Venezuelan women aged 18 to 50 have undergone, attempts to achieve a figure thought to be more attractive to Venezuelan men...."

These injections are the latest in a long list of extreme beauty procedures in this beauty-obsessed country. Other extreme self-improvement methods include fasting pacts among friends, vomit-inducing syrup, and most recently the sewing of a plastic patch onto the tongue, which renders the consumption of solid food extremely painful....

Enough about the buttocks. Let's take a look at that tongue.

Launched in 2009 by Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Nikolas Chugay, the patch is secured to the tongue with six stitches in a $2,000 procedure that takes just ten minutes.

As one patient said: 'It hurt... I'm like, Christ it does work, I can't eat!"

You know, you could save yourself a lot of pain and $2,000 if you just went on a liquid diet, which you still have to do along with the pain and $2,000.

On the other hand, it's less of an intrusion and expenditure than the stomach surgery people submit to, so there's that. And how about those Venezuelan women and the things they do to be more attractive to Venezuelan men?