When you think of the cosmetics industry, glossy visions of supermodels, lipstick and mascara wands flash through your head.

But this week, we saw the flip side of pretty, a dark underbelly where the repercussions of our beauty ideals came to the forefront in two troubling stories - Red headed kids are getting beat up in California because of their hair color, and Peruvian gang members are killing people to sell their fat for cosmetic surgery.

Last Friday, at least three middle-schoolers in Calabasas, California, an affluent suburb of Los Angeles, were were kicked and hit by dozens of classmates, for nothing besides having red hair.

Officials are pointing fingers at an anti-red head Facebook group (there are many, including Ginger Beatdown, Ginger Watch '09 and Opponents of Gingervitis), which deemed the day "Kick a Ginger Day" and urged members to attack anyone with red hair and freckles. The Facebook group was inspired by a 2005 South Park episode that satirized prejudice against "gingers," after the character Cartman claims that redheads have no soul.

While red heads are not usually targeted in the US, "gingerism" is a concern in the UK, where an underlying anti-redhead prejudice stems from the historic tension between the English and the Irish and Scottish.

And even more troubling: Police in Lima, Peru have arrested members of a jungle gang suspected of murdering people and draining their fat to sell on the black market for use in cosmetic surgery.

Three suspects confessed to slaughtering five victims, but authorities say the gang may have been involved in more, and may not be the only group involved in such killings. The fat is said to be selling for $60,000 a gallon. The Chicago Sun Times reports on the gruesome process to remove the fat from the bodies.

Medical experts have expressed skepticism that there is a black market for fat, but in the Huanuco province, where the gang operates, at least 60 people have been listed as missing this year.

While these stories are not directly related to the pretty faces we see staring back at us in beauty advertisements, they both skirt the boundaries of the cosmetics industry. The Peruvian killings illustrate how far some may go to fuel the industry, and the red-head attacks focus on beauty ideals, punishing people for how they look.

So much for lipstick.