By JULLIE Y. DAZA
AFTER 20 performances as M. Butterfly, the gender-pliant RS Francisco has conquered a new generation of fans of the theater. Add the previous generation who raved over his acting in that same role 28 years ago, in 1990, when he was 18. Now 46 and looking not a day older than half that age, would RS care to explain the secret of his youthfulness?
Thanks to “Chairman Mau” who bought our tickets, we who saw RS butt-naked or fully costumed on stage must’ve had our arithmetic wrong – how can he be 46 and look 23? A follower of RS’ career then and now thinks the answer is “gluta”: RS owns a company that sells tons and tons of whitening cream, endorsed by three Misses Universe and Daniel Padilla.
As it happens, an expert from Italy teaches that “glutathione is produced by the body, and it’s more than a skin whitening agent” when it’s absorbed by the body’s cells. Protected from the digestive tract, gluta when swallowed is said to produce the good stuff that we imagine as the wonder of anti-aging. (TM meditators invented the term “reversal of aging.”) The expert, Marco Lattanzi, is an industrial biotechnologist who’s here to launch Eslite with its promise of cognitive, skin, and liver health, enhanced energy, etc.
Eslite’s elite endorsers are Sophie, a 25-year-old English beauty, and Celine Pialago, the 26-year-old MMDA spokesperson. “Aren’t you too young to be taking anti-aging meds?” was the loudest question thrown at the two pretty girls during last week’s Bulong Pulungan at Sofitel. “I need all the extra energy I can get. Not for whitening, I’m always under the sun,” said the olive-skinned Celine, who has been taking her once-a-day capsules for the last two months.
The product, said Marco, is sold around the world under different brand names. Also in Africa? Yes, in South Africa.
One thing about the new nutraceuticals is how science keeps going back to nature in the quest for the fountain of youth. Eslite, for example, is extracted from a variety of French cantaloupe melon. Deborah Mitchell, an esthetician based in the UK, has found bee venom to be the “natural alternative to Botox.” She has a spa in Shangri-la Plaza called Heaven. That’s bees, melon, and a lotta gluta!