What's your biggest beauty regret?

[#1]

We all have at least one! Something that we thought looked great at the time, that now haunts our memories...or even worse...is immortalized in photos.

I feel like my "worst" beauty years were in middle school , when I was still learning about makeup. Three words words, metallic blue eyeshadow. I wore it every day in 7th grade...as did every other girl at my school...it was really bad. Frosted lipglosses was another big one.

Luckily I stopped all that once I got to high school, and by the time Sophmore year came around I pretty much had my makeup act together . Unfortunately I'd fallen into the habit of over plucking my brows, I'm so lucky they continued growing back. Long acrylic nails was a big trend during high school that I regret, they always left my natural nails so frail and brittle. 

[#2]

My two biggest ones:

Using Sun-In. I wanted blonde hair and thought this would be the fastest and easiest way to achieve it. However, my hair is naturally dark brown. Three guesses as to what color I ended up with. Fortunately I've come to realize I look better with darker shades of red hair.

My signature makeup look in junior high was teal eye shadow, bold blush, and fuchsia lipstick. Yes, at the same time. Fortunately I've since learned to enphasize only one facial feature (usualy eyes) and lighten up on the blush.

[#3]

Regrets:

Picking at skin, ugh, and not just on my face either... T_T I also have two burns on my arms from dumb friends with cigarettes...

Frowning! I'm really scared of getting frown lines!

Letting my friend pluck my eyebrows in 8th grade. I had nice, thick. but not too thick eyebrows. She did nothing but make them a bit uneven and plucked my blonde hairs so they grew  back black! It's hard to get the exact shape now ...

Makeup!

 1) thinking that black lipstick was cool (I had a misrable Halloween where I wanted to be a vampire and mixed black lipstick and white makeup together by accident so my skin looked gray in some places lol) 2) Not fixing "panda eyes" from eye liner so people in highschool thought I was a stoner LOL 3) thinking that sparkly eyeshadow is okay for daytime/job (the celebutaunte pallete by benefit cosmetics) 4) I also think I wore too much mascara and didn't take it off properly, so I accidentily pulled out a few lashes *sniff*

Hairwise, oh man. Two and half years ago, I permed my hair with a "super" boxed perm. I continously had clumps of hair coming out when I washed my hair for weeks (I think only a year before that I straight up peroxide bleached it). I also used a cheap blow dryer and hair straightener that gave me lots of split ends. Since then, I still have the split ends but my hair regained most of its volume. I'm currently trying to grow my hair long, too.

I always hated fake nails (the glue especially), so I don't have a problem with that. But, I do a lot of activites where I can break my nails often- sculpture,  ceramics, gardening, and archaeological stuff. I always forget to wear gloves for the outdoor stuff. For ceramics, you just have to accept not having a cute manicure.

[#4]

I forgot one! Putting powder makeup on dry or flakey skin. Bad idea!

[#5]

Not learning how to do make-up earlier.  I don't know if it was the same with other women, but no one ever taught me how to use makeup or even do my hair (and I was never brave enough to experiment).  I'm 34 now, and through various websites (and lots of Sephora purchases, heehee) I'm finally figuring it all out.  I LOVE the way I look now; it's amazing what it's done for my self-confidence.  

[#6]

oh my mom doesn't wear make up so they never taught me how to do make up. I read tons of articles about make up for teens before gathering up the courage to ask my parents to buy me a lipstick (that I thought was my natural lip color but was actually bright fuscia, could be worse) and Clinique powder for prom.

So yeah, my first encounter with make up was prom. My first encounter with make up remover was in college. And now in grad school, every minute I use for make up could be used to make up lost sleep, so I wear make up only once a week. =P

[#7]

This is hilarious!  Sounds like many of us have become victims to some of the same beauty faux pas. hehe

I too fell victim to the Sun-In craze and eyebrow shaving with disatrous results. . .

 And  (I am dating myself here) I was a child of the 80s-- so you can imagine how much I teased and sprayed my hair to make it as BIG as possible. YIKES! 

Another one I just thought of was that I used to really over do it with translucent powder, which in pictures, makes your face look whiter than the rest of your body.  SCARY! 

What was I thinking???? LOL

[#8]

This is awful!  

@janine - We definitely do live and learn. My biggest regrets are:

1. Rum raisin lipstick > Enough said.

2. The wave. To this day I can't flip my middle school yearbook open without laughing. My photo doesn't even look like me at all.

3. I've said this before, but before I was used to wearing makeup, I used a lip liner as an eyebrow color. Boy was that a comedy when I went to work and helped customers. I immediately wiped that off when someone told me my brows looked like they were on fire! 

Cheers,

Tiffany

P.S. Thanks for sharing ladies. I enjoyed the laugh and feel better knowing all of you have regrets.

[#9]

My biggest beauty regret was the Jherri Curl, which I got back in 1979.  I just HAD to be one of the first ones to get one and you coudn't tell me I wasn't the cutest little thing in shoe leather back then!  Then I compounded it a few years later by getting a Wave Nouveau dry curl.  I've lost track of the amount of money I spent to maintain these hairstyles.  I cringe when I see pictures of myself from those years.

[#10]

I have several! The most notable ones are:

1. Sun-In on my naturally medium to dark brown hair: Worst. Mistake. Ever.

2. At 14, coming up with the brilliant and time-saving idea of putting Nair hair remover on my stray eyebrow hairs. Yeah...you can't use it like that. (I am SO fortunate that my eyebrows grew back.)

3. Overplucking.

4. My circa-late-1990s-early 2000s-penchant for brown lipstick shades...too harsh on me!

5. Wearing white (or very light pastel) eye shadow on its own...it definitely photographs in reverse raccoon fashion. Eeek.

[#11]

@ Katie1724  I fell victim to Sun-In as well.  My hair was a dark blonde and the color wasn't bad but it absolutely destroyed my hair!

A couple others:

Wet and Wild lipstick in bright red and bright orange. NOT a good look for me!

Pink hair.  Also not the best look

[#12]

Glad to know that I'm not the only one that's had huge beauty regrets in my life. We live and we learn . 

[#13]

This is amazing. I have definitely fallen victim to many of the same beauty blunders. Frosted lip gloss, check! Over plucked eyebrows, check! I have always been lucky enough to have good skin in terms of never having real break outs. Occasionally I'd get a pimple or a blackhead, but I still managed to PICK at my blemishes that NO ONE ELSE could see and have a few small scars. In middle school when I hit puberty my hair went from pin straight to a crazy, frizzy, kinky, unmanageable MESS! I had no idea what to do with it and so I just wore a 'ballerina' bun on the top of my head for three years, sans the elegant beauty and plus a million fly away frizzies. When I finally did start straightening it I overdid it and didn't use any product to protect my hair from the heat and fried it. My hair grows extremely slowly and it took forever to get it to a semi-healthy state. Luckily the kink settled down as I got older and it has settled into wild curls...while I still long for straight hair from time to time I've learned to embrace it and work with it. In high school I used a lot of very shimmery white/icy eyeshadows that looked awful on me!! Ahhh so glad my makeup and habits have changed with the times  

[#14]

1. Picking at my zits when I was younger. I have a couple acne scars that I'm treating now because of that dumb dumb.

2. Overplucking my eyebrows. Sadly they're super short now, so I HAVE to color them in now!

3. When I had super dark hair, I wanted the underneath of my bangs to be white like some girl on that show "Bad Girls Club" (ie winter 2010) I bleached it too much, too fast, and it took FOREVER for that section of hair to recover! When I decided to go back to blonde, I committed to taking the bleachings slow, and did 2 bleach baths and 4 bleachings over the course of 5 weeks. (Hair is in pretty great condition now, it's longer and still growing )

4. When I first started wearing blush or bronzer, I wore WAY too much! There's photos of my face looking funky ...

This is such a good post!

[#15]

My biggest beauty regrets, gosh, there's a pile of them!

1) Not wearing a good sunscreen. Sunscreen wasn't invented when I was small, my parents used to coat me with Coppertone tanning oil and send me out to play. I burned and peeled constantly all summer, and even when SPF was invented, I wasn't good about putting it on because it was thick and goopy and I hated the texture. Plus it caused my face to break out, so even if I put it on my body, my face was unprotected. So now I'm dealing with sun wrinkles, sun spots and suspicious moles.

2) Teased hair!  I have fine limp hair and I always admired the big hair styles, so I teased up my poor head and sprayed like a half can of Elnett in it. Then it had the bad habit of going flat on one side by mid day, so it looked like a deflated balloon up there!  I have pictures to prove it (YIKES!) The wiglet that looked like a dead rat on my head was also in an attempt to have big hair, that was not good, but fortunately I didn't leave the house with it on.

3) Dynasty era makeup! Those high brow arches and blue shadow, eek.

Thanks for the trip down cringe worthy memory lane!  I wonder what I'll think of my makeup routine in another 15 years????

[#16]

OMYGoodness.... Cringe Lane really. Probably the worst Beauty habit was picking Skin and Face, ingrown hairs and EyeBrows. When I first thought unibrow had to go, I thought shaving was a fab idea.. I used a razor in between EyeBrows and then realized 1/4 was missing so I used EyeLiner to try to make look normal. Horendous. Another hidious habit was long acrylic nails like 2". And Brown eyeshadow with frosty Lips and Orange looking Foundation because I thought I looked Tan.. Cringing. AngieB.

[#17]

I wore acrylics for years and my own nails are permanently damaged and extremely soft.  I've been taking biotin and it has had no effect.  I made the same mistake with overplucking my brows when I was a teenager.  I have recently been using a growth serum and it actually works, but it is a slow process. 

[#18]

I dont have any makeup regrets. I didnt really start using makeup until I was about 19 and by then I had seen enough youtube videos and celebrity looks to do a solid job on my own face.

I really regret using Proactiv Solution because it turned my normal and clear skin with a few under the skin bumps on my chin area into dry, sensitive skin with acne all over. *cringes*

[#19]

My gosh, if it makes you feel any better, I went through three years of looking like one of those bushy troll dolls. I had raging acne and no since of style! But it's all over now and I can just look back on it and laugh. When I finally did start wearing make up, I put on some mascara and didn't want my mom to see so I cut off part of my eyelashes! Can you imagine? It wasn't that bad but they still haven't fully grown back and that was at least a year ago! Good times..... NOT!

[#20]

I really REALLY wished I properly moisturized when growing up (I was the nerdy and don't care about anything else type).

I didn't wear SPF until ~14 years old, and I lived in south TX (*cringe*). I also used to apply moisturizer the same way I now do body lotion, dump out a quarter size amount of whatever facial moistuizer I grabbed without looking, lather it on and ignore it. Since I have combo skin on the face and don't moisturize my body, I was greasy-faced, flaky-elbowed all the time, with pimples every other week. In fact, my fact was so shiny that when I was getting my passport photos taken, the lady couldn't get a picture of me where my nose/cheek wasn't a cross shaped light and told me to go buy/put on some powder and then come back.

It wasn't until college when I got dragged into a promo/chat by a very very patient Clinique saleslady (I was skeptical and sarcastic) that I learned there's different skin types and stuff to do. That encounter changed my skincare life and now I've learned how to treat my skin when it's oily/flaky/pimply/red. Now, I just need to find something for puffy eyes and even skin......

[#21]

I feel your pain about the over plucked eyebrows.  I hate seeing my Sophomore year photo in the yearbook.  It seems like dealing with eyebrows can be touchy and takes some mastering.  I never want a repeat of that.  *shutters*

This beauty regret/habit is still kind of going.  Picking at skin, especially since it's winter.  I don't even realize I'm doing that at times, until my boyfriend or mom tells me to quit.