For the last 31 years, Madam Boob Slapper has made a lucrative living out of her unique brand of non-invasive, entirely natural beauty treatments. Her offerings include face slapping, breast slapping, and shoulder and butt punching (“Gays love butts,” she confides). She is careful to devote each day of the week to a different body part. “I don’t want to slap face and punch butt in the same day,” she says. “I have butt days and face days.”
First taught the slapping technique by her grandmother, Madam Boob Slapper promises to lift and firm the selected area by increasing blood flow to the surface of the skin. The walls of the bathroom in her sprawling, two-story shop in the outskirts of Bangkok are covered with laminated newspaper clippings that pay tribute to her decades-long career. She claims to count models and TV personalities among her clients, and her students have appeared on Good Morning America and The Doctors.
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When I come in for my own breast treatment, Madam Boob Slapper opens the door to her salon in an ensemble that she swears only takes twenty minutes to pull together. Emerald-flecked fake eyelashes arch over thickly painted brows; streaks of lemon and sky-blue-colored eyeshadow compete with the hot-pink of her lips. A riotous headdress of flowers and butterflies, pinned carefully into her hair, is teamed with a heavily embellished, sweeping gown in black and cobalt blue.
“I am world famous, and many people know me,” she says. “A lot of people try to copy me abroad.” These copycats have become such a thorn in Madam Boob Slapper’s side that she sent a letter to the Guinness Book of World Records claiming that her career should win the accolade of “most copied.” She claims they “accepted” her message, although she’s yet to scoop the award.
When it comes to my own bust, Madam Boob Slapper is concerned. “You’ve been doing a lot of yoga and now your boobs are growing inside,” she says, gazing with apprehension at my deflated décolletage. I become anxious—Madam Boob Slapper has been known to reject anyone that she considers too flat-chested to benefit from her treatments. One slightly-built TV presenter’s hopes for a bigger bust were dashed with the declaration, “No future!” She was sent away red-faced.
Instead, we start with an anti-aging treatment that Madam Boob Slapper hopes will be more effective. “You should get a face slapping first because there are no boobs,” she reasons as she seats me in a chair facing a mirror.
Turning to a stereo, she switches on a track and begins to move in a choreographed routine to its beat, hitting her own face rhythmically with varying strokes. Then, approaching me, she begins to wallop my eyes, my temples and my jawline in slicing motions like those used to finely chop onions. All the while she continues to dance.
“When we hear happy songs, our muscles relax, just like when we hear sad songs, we cry,” she explains of the performance element of her beauty therapies. This was something she added herself, along with the elaborate outfit. It’s a successful marketing strategy. “Everyone knows this is my identity. People around the world remember that this is me,” she tells me.
Next up is the boob slapping. I’m escorted into a private room and ordered to strip and lie down on a massage table. A piece of tissue is placed over one side of my face as Madam Boob Slapper massages a tingling lotion over the exposed breast (“You don’t need to mention that in the article,” she says later, somewhat suspiciously). As the blows begin to fall, I shriek and squirm. Afterwards, she measures the circumference of my chest, then, yelling with dramatic effect, yanks my tits high in my bra, one after the next. They look plumper. They also look beet red.
In her early days as a hairdresser, Madam Boob Slapper had to be careful how she introduced her clientele to these unorthodox methods. Thailand, a deceptively conservative society, considered nudity taboo. From her vantage point while blow-drying their hair, Madam Boob Slapper would scope out the cleavage of her small-busted customers. If a woman looked like she needed a hand, she’d offer to slap them.
“At first, when I had the beauty salon and was doing a lot more boob slapping, people were so confused because their hair was still in a mess but they came out with bigger and firmer boobs,” she remembers. Soon, her reputation grew. “People were lining up to get their boobs slapped,” she says.
At her peak, she was treating 50 people, or “100 boobs,” per day.
Now, aged 49 and dealing with ongoing health problems, Madam Boob Slapper limits her daily intake to ten people. She can afford to do so—a face slapping treatment, which takes place over four separate appointments, costs $860. Even more staggering, her students, there are currently five, pay anywhere from $300,000-$860,000 in cash upfront to study with her.
Post-treatment, she shows me her enviable collection of designer handbags, including an enormous Chanel hold-all recently purchased from the United States. The breast-beating business, it appears, is booming.
But does it work? It’s hard to tell on myself, but Madam Boob Slapper’s tits —which she energetically wallops every day—are magnificent. “I have the boobs of a 17 year old,” she says, lifting her gown to reveal a pair of bra-less, phenomenally buoyant breasts. Encouraging me to prod them, she adds, “I never wear a bra.”
I ask Madam Boob Slapper what she offers her clientele. “Beauty with identity. Beauty with value,” she declares majestically. “I am an angel that can make you beautiful with a really natural way.”
Later, as she escorts me to the waiting taxi, she rushes to open its door. “One of the most famous women in the world is going to open the taxi door for you,” she says, enveloping me in a hug before sending me on my way.
