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What's the worst beauty blunder you've committed?
What’s the worst beauty blunder you’ve committed? Over-plucked brows? Major sunburn/tan lines? Partied way too hard and it showed? How did you fix it?
I’d say over-plucked brows for me, and the only way to fix it was to take a deep breath and let them grow back. I plucked any totally stray hairs but left anything close to where I wanted the brow to eventually be. Months of agony!
Thanks to Ashley for today’s question!
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In the early to mid nineties, there was a trend to shave designs into your brows. At one point, I was kickin’ rad with half an eyebrow on one side, and a vertical line on either side of the arch on the other. Ugh.
Does dying my hair blonde and having it turn green count when I was 18? I wore foundation about 4 shades too light for me in the 80’s because I just really wanted to look like Siouxie. Yup, and I seriously continually overplucked my brows in the 90’s and they never grew back as full as they once were 🙁 I’m sure there is more..
@wwendalynne I loved Siouxsie in my teens also. 🙂
I wore the same foundation and powder ( as white as I could get) and winged black eyeliner (lots!) I also copied her hairdo from the video “Peek-a-Boo” (I was into ALL of her older stuff, too, though –especially “Juju”–have to protect my cred!) My hair was black with blue highlights. My neighbor asked me (in a very kind, honest way) if I was satanic! I lived in a very, very small town.
@GenaCunningham So happy you were able to shake things up in your small town… hope you left it lying in dust ;-0)
@wwendalynne I *still* want to look like Siouxsie…
@xamyx how the heck do I reply to everyone who has replied?? I was just so thrilled to see all the positive Siouxie comments and hell, I’d love to look like her still too!!
@wwendalynne I ont think emulating Siouxsie Sioux is EVER a crime!
@18thCenturyFox okay, I just got a warm feeling in my heart for all the Siouxie love~
My horribly overplucked brows: http://a2.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/57/63fa36066c3d4b478bcb69acbe54e5ab/l.jpg I’m still embarrassed 4 years later lol. I don’t know why I thought that looked good.
Also, a year of wearing horrible greasy drugstore foundation that not only looked bad, but gave me horrible acne that I still have a ton of scars from.
I think the more appropriate question would be what is the least horrible beauty blunder I’ve ever committed–because there have been SEVERAL bad ones. Overplucking was definitely one of mine (still can’t grow back my brows in certain areas :/), partying and not taking care of my skin=bad acne when I was younger, and also in middle school, I used to take eyeliner and draw a line into just my crease (sort of like Twiggy except much, much worse). Lol
erm…. i once sneezed while curling my lashes. 1st time on one side of my eye. And then I committed the same thing again on the other side a few months later. needless to say, my lashline is pretty much bare now 🙁
@Jacqqqqq ooooohhhhh ouuuuuccchhh!
@Jacqqqqq Holy crap, OWWW!
Bleaching my own hair, and having it turn out “school bus yellow”. I waited about a week, then used a “fire engine red”, vegetable-based dye to cover it up for a while, then gradually added darker shades of red until I reached a nice auburn shade. It really wasn’t so bad since I didn’t have a job at the time, and I used to dye my hair pretty often, anyway.
@xamyx
I forgot about hair color, bleached mine with Clairol peroxide and a product called Ultra blue which activated the peroxide- no toner whatsoever. School bus yellow is the perfect description!
@Susan Dowman Nevling I’m not 100% sure, but I think those were the *exact* products I used as well! This was a good 15 years ago, but I do remember not using a toner.
I had too bushy of brows for a while, they were kept up just in the wrong way. Also I wore white pearl eyeshadow for almost two years straight in Middle School. Yikes! It doesn’t look good looking back at photos.
@misscheriamor i think everyone did this. i had a wet n wild cream pearl shadow that i used up in 7th grade
@misscheriamor I definitely did this. I don’t remember which white I used. I feel like it was Wet ‘n Wild something or other. That was the only brand I could afford in 9th grade. I also wore it with white liner at times! O_O…
Wearing frosted pink lipstick as a teenager. The worst part is I have red hair so I thought it looked good. Looking back now it was pretty scary looking.
In high school, I over-filled my brows with pencil. I thought it was so hot, too.
probably skipping out on sleep .. its starting to really show on my face with all the acne and what not lol
my worst one would be whitening products. I was in Asia during my teenhood and everytime I went to beauty counter, I went home with lots of super expensive whitening products even if I actually went for help for other problems. ex blemish, oily face and etc …I didn’t need or want those products and never really used them either. What I really wanted was just something to control my breakout but well, I was too young and easy, I bought everything just to stop them pushing me and that wasted me LOTS of money!
my second worst one is suger and it is still going on now. I just can not resist cakes, creams, frappuccino even though I know that is one of the main reason that most of my breakouts are around my lower jaw and chin.
and one more, kind of weird one. my last few lashes at right eye kind of grow toward inside of my eye and i used to pull them off everytime they grew back and now I am bold at the corner of my eye.. 🙁
I just noticed it the other day. The light in my bathroom isn’t bad but it’s not the greatest and more light comes onto one side of my face (from a large window) than from the other. But while I was out, I noticed these 2 big splotches of foundation on the one side of my face (the side that isn’t as well lit). I was wearing MAC Pro Longwear and , of course, it had already set so I couldn’t budge these 2 splotches! I felt so self-conscious all day. Fortunately, my hair pretty much covered the splotches and I was only going to the grocery store and a few other errands but it made me realize I have to check my foundation more carefully in my car mirror before heading off anywhere!
I have insanely curly hair, and I used to have bangs from the time I was a child until I was in grade 10. Awful!!!! And I remember how your brows used to look Christine, and you did a wonderful job growing them back in! They’re great now 🙂
Overplucked brows as well I think (unless you want to count the days on which I only did my eye makeup and NOTHING else… *gulps*)! I have learnt that right before going to bed at 1AM, any hair that looks like it should go should probably stay instead. Refraining myself from going tweezer-happy in the wee hours is a principle that I try to stick to!
For sure over plucked brows. Thin brows were popular in the 90s (at least in my neck of the woods) and it was during the 90s that I was just starting to become aware of beauty/personal grooming so over plucking was how I thought you were supposed to do it. Since the mid 2000’s I’ve been letting them grow back.
My other blunder was being completely unaware of how incredibly creased (this creasing was epic, I’ve never seen anything look more creased on me) my cream eyeshadows were and going about my day like that. Even though some formulas get the green light in terms of lasting power and creasing I’m still gun shy about ever trying cream shadows again because of my past experiences with that kind of product.
Overpucked eyebrows, definitely… back in 2005/2006 I step on some boundaries x) glad they were able to fully grow back! x
In response to the question I’d say getting a hair cut that did not suit my face at all was my worst beauty blunder. I eventually grew my hair out and will never cut it like that again!
I have a few.. I definitely had my eyebrows waxed too thin. Luckily they grew back for the most part, except in one area. But that took forever. In middle school I used to wear blue eyeshadow and pile glitter on top. Dying my hair an unnatural shade of blonde. Not keeping up with trimmings. Wearing foundation that is slightly too dark. I have a whole bunch.
Dying my hair, did it three times and every time my hair let me know how much it hatted me. lol
I can say I’ve never over-plucked brows only because I don’t have much of a brow to over pluck to begin with. They are thin, spars and low set on my face. I hate them and wish then never grew in int the first place. I didn’t have brows for the first 3 years of my life from photo’s, I have dimples that are about my actually brows that looked like eye brows with my chubby face. haha
all of middle school was a beauty blunder for me. I loved thick bright eyeliner (some people can pull it off, but not me), super dark lip colors (same comment), and smudgy red eyeliner. I had my natural medium brown hair color with thick stripes of blonde and red. I once got the shortest pseudo-pixie cut known to man (exaggeration hahaha), and it looked horrible because I do NOT have the right face shape to pull it off. I went through a few “emo” phases, so dark hair, dark makeup, the whole thing. the dark hair was okay, but it would’ve looked nicer if it were shorter or if I hadn’t straightened it as much. I’m basically going through my old myspace pics and pointing out everything bad. there’s a lot. those were not my best years lol
Dying my hair green–in the front yard of a friends house and we used the sprinklers to “wash it out” after the 15 minutes. All it did was make my blond hair look like I had been swimming and hadn’t washed my hair afterwards. Worse two weeks of my life. Thank goodness my was long enough to fit into a bun and it was only a semipermanent dye.
Wow… Where do I start?
Wearing the wrong shade of foundation for years straight in High School?
Wearing dark purple lipstick that made me look like The Corpse Bride?
Bleaching my own hair, ending up with shades of pink, bright yellow or really white…?
Putting concealer ALL over my nose to cover up black heads?
Just a few ones that came to mind hahaha!
Years ago, before I knew about cool and warm undertones I got a shade of foundation that’s a little too pink for me. Stupid beauty store didn’t accept exchange for their BA’s erroneous color matching for me. I just covered it up with a beige powder. Couldn’t throw it away because I was a struggling student and had a tight budget. FML.
Now that I have a career with a good paycheck, I can’t say I can look back with fondness for the mediocre drugstore products I was stuck using even though the drugstore cosmetics industry appears to have gone through some kind of revolution that they’re improving their quality and giving more expensive brands a run for their money. I wish that revolution happened earlier back then!
when i was seventeen i wanted to try a self tanner and i went to CVS and bought what i thought was an good self tanner. i was a bright orange oompa loompa for weeks! it was splotchy too! like super orange in some areas and white in others. MY ARMPITS had orange creases in them. I had to go to school and graduation parties like that. My friends tortured me and i just had to scrub my flesh off everyday in the shower.
never again.
i almost waxed off half of my brow when I was 16. As cheesy as it sounds, someone must have been looking over me because I didn’t. They were really thin though! Never dared waxing my own brows again. Don’t do it!
I definitely overplucked in highschool too! Other blunders: wearing way too light powder over my face in highschool with really dark eye makeup! I look very freakish looking back at photos!
hair color disasters definitely!
I commited several blunders when I was in my early teens. I overplucked my eyebrows so badly once that I was barely in the mood to leave the house. The worst thing about it is that you can’t conceal it really with a pencil because it’ll be obvious for anybody as soon as they step closer. When I was 13 I deyed my hair a fiery shade of red and it clashed horribly with my blue eyes. I still wonder why my mom allowed me to do it.
I’ve overplucked my brows, but I have to say the worst offense was when I let a friend use too-dark lipliner while giving me a “makeover”. More like a makeunder.
Too pink foundation. I really liked the staying power of Revlon Colorstay but I could not get a good color match at all. The depth of color would be right, but always too pink. My skin tone tends more towards the yellow. I still cringe at photos of me during my “Colorstay” period.
@Lauren13 I was thinking about my reply to this question- and ironically, it revolves around the Revlon colorstay too. I’m extremely fair and the second lightest shade {the only one I could find available near me and by far the lightest in stock they had} of their concealer was still a bit too dark for me, but workable. The issue was that it was much too yellow for my skintone, so that made for a very awkward, orangey match. God, I wish I had known MAC NW15 concealers existed back then.
Definitely having super black brows. I remember when I first started wearing makeup, I used the MAC Eye Brow pencil in Velvetone to fill in my brows (since I have black brows)! One of the ladies at the counter told me that it didn’t look very good, and I was like, really? Haha. Apparently it’s such a “blunder” that MAC doesn’t even carry Velvetone anymore (I think it’s discontinued), just so that makeup newbies like me don’t commit such an egregious error again. Thanks, MAC… Lol!
@John 3D SO funny you said that about the Velvetones! I have had like a tumultuous Fabio Romance with my eyebrows. In the late ’90’s I hung out at the MAC counter a lot and they used the Velvetones on me because I swear by a strong brow ( even at the gym!) to this day I may have pulled an “angry” look a la Seinfeld at some people but Lord knows I love my discontinued Velvetones on top of my powder 🙂
I’m really glad I didn’t do the “pornstar” pencil thin brow look in the 90s. I always wanted to but was so scared my eyebrows wouldn’t grow back right.
Probably the worst thing I did was Nair my cheeks. I have some light downy hair and it really bothered me when I was younger. But absolutely no hair made the make-up sit weird and there was a really faint line where the super fine hair picked up again on my cheeks. Now I realize everybody has a little hair on their cheeks and it’s really no big deal at all.
I have peach fuzz but I’m too scared to try and get rid of it…no one ever notices it except me (or at least I think so!), and I don’t want to have a similar experience.
@annedreshfield Anne, you don’t have to! You could bleach it, I have lots of hair on my cheeks and it works. I have used both regular hair dye and specialized products and they all have a similar effect. The downside to it is that it can burn your skin and your eyes while you are doing it and you might have to use a soothing product after the procedure.
Good to know! I’m lucky that I’m blonde, so the peach fuzz is very light and hardly noticeable unless I’m in bright sunlight. 🙂 Sometimes wearing powder can emphasize it, though. Bare Escentuals’ Mineral Veil doesn’t seem to, thankfully!
@annedreshfield
Anne, After applying your powder of choise, take a buki type brush w/ no powder and brush downward. The fuzz will lay down and behave!
@Susan Dowman Nevling Ohh, I’ll definitely try this! Thanks. 😀
@annedreshfield
Let me know if it works well for you. Hope so. Best wishes!
Sounds like most of our blunders were in Middle School or Jr. High, I was not allowed to shave my legs or wear makeup at age 12 in 1961. In the interest of fairness, I really didn’t have much hair and it was light in color. I decided I would shave just the front so no one would notice. MY poor father went thru a lot of razor blades without ever knowing why. I also wore mascara but could only afford the dime store kind. I don’t think they had tubes then. I bought a bright navy blue that came in a hard cake form and was applied with a wet brush that looks like the eyebrow brushes now. Horrible. It was also the thing to have no lip color so I put concealer on my lips and added clear gloss.
I’d say slapping on layers and layers of drugstore liquid foundation when I was in early high school…I had terrible acne, couldn’t afford better foundations…so I ended up having tons of foundation on my face. I bet it looked horrible!
For whatever reason, for years I thought I had a way darker skin tone than what I really have. I’m an nc15 but was buying the third or fourth shade out of every line of foundation instead of the first lightest…which depending on the line can still be a bit dark on me. when I test my old foundations I wonder why I thought they matched me…
Ugh im going thru that now it really does suck LOL
I did that too lol.
I plucked so much, for so many years that I had to have them tattooed back on. 🙁
I bleached mine in HS and they burned the crap outta me PLUS they looked crazy growing back.
I never over plucked but got them burned once … Ohhh really hard dayz to get them back … Even lashez were burnt too
Letting a nail “Spa” wax my brows a few times. I now have one brow that will NOT grow in properly D:
Over tweezed brows and “blonde” streaks in my dark brown hair that looked orange. Then dying it too black.
Eyebrows!!! Always happens.. need to learn that only a professional can make them look nice…
Same for me, only I over waxed as opposed to over plucked. The worst part is that one looked perfect, and the other was over waxed. I went months without plucking/waxing and I colored them both in. It was a pretty awful experience!
Probably over-plucking when I was a teenager. I didn’t appreciate the awesome, ever-so-slightly evil look that my thick eyebrows gave me. Growing them out did take a few months, but it was worth it. All I have to do is sorta clean up any strays, but that can be a real pain, because the tweezers ALWAYS seem to just cut a hair so that I can’t grab it again. Then I have to wait another week for it to grow enough to where I try again. -_-
filling my eyebrows to the point where people asked if they were tattooed. oh and i should mention i used to use the blackest eyeliner pencil you can imagine, lol oh i still cringe.
I’ve over plucked before but luckily I’m a hairy italian/Portuguese girl (lol) so mine grow back FAST. I was doing pretty good plucking them on my own for a few months. When I got em waxed a week ago, the girl said I made one slightly thinner than the other but that’s an easy fix 🙂 my worst beauty blunder would have to be bad hair cuts. Bangs may look ok on me now that I’m older but at 18, they made me look 11 lol. That and I couldn’t pull off a pixie cut when I was younger but that’s another thing that I think would look ok on me now that I’m older 🙂 I cried when I got one 8 years ago though lol
Def over plucking…thank goodness for Latisse, now they are filling back in nicely:-)
Having chin/under chin waxed. Now, I have a bad case of ingrown hairs that drive me insane…have to pluck them out daily!!
orange face for me
Oh man… Overplucked brows, bleached hair, or a water based foundation in the humidity. It all wasn’t very pretty!
I havent done anything to mine but about 2 weeks ago, I went to get my eyebrows waxed and the lady took off way too much on one side so now they are uneven and are taking FOREVER to grow back to normal 🙁
I used foundation that was a shade too dark for me for a looooong time. I’m apparently paler than I think I am.
I did the opposite and used a foundation that was at least 4 shades too light. I wore that in combination with an almost raspberry colored eyeshadow and one I would describe as “peach vomit”. I looked like a mole person that hadn’t seen daylight in years.
having my bangs cut too far back, is awful, still waiting for them to grow out all the way
Oh Lord! Where to begin?!
Navy blue mascara aged 14-15. Sun In which made my dark brown hair turn into white straw eventually. Plucking my eyebrows to death at various times of my life. Shaving my brows off then pencilling them in – last year! Not grooming my brows at all, various stages of my life (they’re like fuzzy caterpillars untended.) Streaky fake tan as a teen. Badly misjudging my own paleness and thus never being without a tide mark on my neck up until about last year.
I’m glad to say I learn as I go along thanks to beauty blogs!
I’ve been through the over plucked eyebrows. I also had very thin brows on purpose at one time, and what a pain in the butt it was to grow them back. By now they are back to being normal. Also had some foundation issues, buying one too dark, and then going too light. First time I used concealer I didn’t blend it in with my face well enough. You could imagine how that looked.
But for me, I’d say the biggest blunder ever, was having bright orange hair for a day and having to go to work like that. I worked in a bank at the time, it was the mistake from going a darker red to blonde and having it go all wrong!
Wearing awful, mismatched drugstore foundation on ONLY my nose. Looking at the photos, I had a big mustard yellow nose with the rest of my face deathly pale. Yikes.
Terrible terrible patches and streaks from self tanner, which (of course!!) I didn’t see until the next morning. Humiliating when I think back to sitting on a sofa with my date, surrounded by his friends and their wives in a square shape. Surely they noticed – how could they not? I am so so careful now. Blech, it still upsets my tummy when I think back.
Throughout late elementary and middle school my hair was always very flat and frizzy, and in order to try to combat it I used all kinds of conditioners. It turned out the conditioners were just further weighing my hair down and making it look gross. The first bronzer I ever used was also orangey , and I used cheap wet n wild face powder that oxidized to orange. I also scrubbed the hell out of my face to try to rid my acne, with no moisturizer. God middle school was awful. But thankfully in High school the caterpillar turned into a butterfly 🙂
I know it’s gross but squeezing blemishes. It always leaves a scar now I’m wasting money on scar fading creams and serums. Nothing works
Hello Kia – I know you posted a while ago but your comment reminded me of the very same problem I had… Dry ice applied (just once) by a dermatologist over my scars worked wonders, no traces left. I did have to hide away for a day after that as I was quite red xD Two bits of info though: I had that done when I was in my early twenties and I have an olive foundation. Just hoped this might be useful info to you 🙂
Chemical burn on my arms in junior high from depiltory. Ouch!
DIY brazillian wax. Never again!!!
My worst beauty blunder has got to be the time I tried to tan. I am incredibly pale and prone to freckling, so I went from white, to red, to white with VERY DARK freckles! Not my finest moment! Now I just embrace the pale.
Wearing MAC foundations, causing huge breakouts and still fighting the scars. Horrible, horrible foundation for me. Also, picking on the pimples, causing it to spread even more and more scars.
Oooooh, I’ve committed a few! Once I left a hair remover above my lips for too long and my skin burned….. I had to go to school the following day with red patches above my lips 🙁 ! My first try with cream blush was not successful at all – I applied way too much, did not have time to try to correct it and had to leave the house like that. I also applied sometimes too much powder to cover blemishes or redness (because I could not afford better makeup) and sported an unflattering “cakey” face that only emphasized my blemishes more!
Hands down…wearing the wrong undertone in my foundation. When I first started wearing makeup, I only wore drugstore foundation, and I would buy and apply makeup with red undertones that “looked like my skintone” in the packaging, but was clearly not the right undertone for me! Whenever, I look at old pictures wearing that foundation, I wonder how it took me an entire year to actually see that orange tinge to my skin. UGH!!!
I have 2: The first of which is overplucking my brows, I look back at photos of myself and think ‘what was I thinking” – the thing is, naturally, my brows don’t have very much of an arched and I was looking for them to look like JulieG713’s, but what they looked like was some odd insect legs. :/ I did eventually get stencils and now fill my brows in every time before I set to plucking, gives me a good guideline. I’ve also learned not to try to stray too far from the way my brows grow naturally.
The second is not blending my makeup. Back in my n00b days I used to think simply dabbing concealer on a blemish was adequate… my makeup was always cakey and I couldn’t figure out why… this didn’t really show up in photography, but I feel bad for anyone who had to see me in person