Your beauty mistakes

[Louise Anne]

What about things you thought were great at the time or would work then turned out not to be such a good idea.
Will any one confess I do not know.

 

[lareine]

Looking at photos of me from the past, my biggest mistakes have been:
- pairing heavy eye makeup with heavy lipstick (unless I was intentionally trying to look like a hooker, but I don't think I was...!)
- using foundation but not blusher, so I appeared pale and ill

Some people might also say that my decision to dye my hair jet black when I have very pale skin was also a mistake, but I'm still happy with that one even though it didn't look at all natural at the time. My hair was so dramatic and shiny!

 

[bunnyb.gal]

I'll freely confess, I was a fashion criminal...I grew up in the '80's. That, I think, says it all!

 

[lareine]

I'll freely confess, I was a fashion criminal...I grew up in the '80's. That, I think, says it all!

Be fair to yourself. I think 80s fashion was society's beauty mistake, not your own personal one!

 

[C-dot]

The first one that comes to mind is getting powder gel nails. I have nicely shaped, durable nails naturally, but I thought they looked nice, and it would be so easy not to have to paint or file them, or worry about them chipping, etc... But reality has an annoying habit of setting in.

Firstly, it was expensive. It was also dramatically harder to do simple things, like wash my hair or type. Then I realized that they looked nasty when they got a little longer, so I had to paint them anyway. Then, I discovered they weren't so durable after all: Where a hard knock would make your natural nail tip break off, the powder gel one fissured, and damn near took off my pinky finger with it - It was incredibly painful.
There's more - It took my poor, whittled-down-to-nothing natural nails close to a year to grow back to normal again once the gel ones were gone.

I've heard horror stories of bacteria getting trapped under these things too, causing terrible infections that disfigured people's fingertips once they healed. Beauty mistake? Oh yes!

 

[UntouchableTreasure]

I think one of my biggest beauty mistakes was not keeping care of my eyebrows. I cringe when I look at some older pictures! Shapely eyebrows really do a lot for my face, and I have definitely come to treasure nice eyebrows!

 

[Heather]

Over plucking my eye brows when I was a teenager. I cringe when I look at my prom photos!

 

[Miss Golightly]

A perm when I was 14 - I wanted beautiful softy curling locks - the end result was looking like Deirdre Barlow from Coronation Street:

Ok - maybe not that bad - but not far off.

I literally ran out of the salon pulling at my hair and wishing it gone - the hairdresser had layered my hair without discussing it with me (this often happens to young people I imagine - which is not right) luckily for me I have very fine and very soft hair so the perm fell out after around 3 weeks - however I was left with awful, awful split ends.

 

[fortworthgal]

I agree with several of the things already posted here. I too was a child of the late 80s/early 90s and went through the typical bad spiral perm with giant bangs, and pink blusher warpaint stripes. I agree with whoever said that was society's mistake, and therefore I don't count it as a personal beauty failure. lol

C-Dot I too have nice natural nails, but wore acrylics off and on for years because I thought it was easier and looked nicer. Expensive and a lot of maintenance. I love the way they look when they are freshly done from the salon, but my nails grow very quickly, and a week later I would need another $35 salon visit. Ugh.

I would say my biggest personal beauty mistake was tanning. I am in Texas where everyone is bronzed and worships the sun, and in my early 20s I regularly visited tanning salons. Actually, my boyfriend at the time got me started by buying me a membership to a tanning salon. Oh how I wish I had never done so. My skin does not look outwardly damaged, but with a family history of skin cancer, I just wish I had embraced my natural pale skin earlier in life.

 

[crwritt]

I agree with several of the things already posted here. I too was a child of the late 80s/early 90s and went through the typical bad spiral perm with giant bangs, and pink blusher warpaint stripes. I agree with whoever said that was society's mistake, and therefore I don't count it as a personal beauty failure. lol

C-Dot I too have nice natural nails, but wore acrylics off and on for years because I thought it was easier and looked nicer. Expensive and a lot of maintenance. I love the way they look when they are freshly done from the salon, but my nails grow very quickly, and a week later I would need another $35 salon visit. Ugh.

I would say my biggest personal beauty mistake was tanning. I am in Texas where everyone is bronzed and worships the sun, and in my early 20s I regularly visited tanning salons. Actually, my boyfriend at the time got me started by buying me a membership to a tanning salon. Oh how I wish I had never done so. My skin does not look outwardly damaged, but with a family history of skin cancer, I just wish I had embraced my natural pale skin earlier in life.

I agree on the acrylic nails. I had them on and off for years for the same reasons you did. The costs add up so quickly.I finally gave them up, and since then heard a nutrition tip : eating one or two brazil nuts per day can seriously strengthen your nails and they grow fast! It truly does work, at least for me. I need to file them every other day, and it has been months since I broke any.

 

[virgi]

ugh I have many. Shaved off my eyebrows at 14 and drew them in. Plucked them super skinny like a chola throughout high school. Wore extremely heavy foundation in high school. Dark, dark almost brown lipstick...really bright cheek color that looked like a clown at 16....but alas, my mistakes have taught me a lot about makeup and I know what looks good, and what doesn't work for my face. So my makeup has remained unchanged for the last 9 years. I just learned a couple of better tricks when making up my face

 

[Lady Jessica]

I learned recently (I'm still making mistakes!) that shaping eyebrows makes one look muuuch better!

 

[AuroraFisherman]

The first one that comes to mind is getting powder gel nails.
It took my poor, whittled-down-to-nothing natural nails close to a year to grow back to normal again once the gel ones were gone.
Beauty mistake? Oh yes!

Done that too
And what a pinful year it is...

And another beauty mistake of mine was going ginger/blond....

 

[rue]

Blue eye shadow when I was 12 shakeshead

 

[Miss sofia]

Blue eye shadow when I was 12 shakeshead

Oh Rue, you're not alone, i wore the most abysmal pink eyeshadow at that age, made me look like someone had given me a left hook!

Bleaching my hair would be a big mistake, not to mention the expense on maintenance and products. (Although i loved it i have to say).
Acrylic nails
Fake tan, (looking through some old photos, i am truly tangerine)!
Not wearing red lipstick everyday, or at least a bright lipstick like a coral or a fuschia, again, looking at some old photos, i look like i have been exhumed, i'm so pale and wan for lack of lippie. It really does cheer up a face.

 

[TheNightingale]

Oh, definitely the bad spiral perm. It made me look like a cocker spaniel, with those sad non-spirals and the huge bangs. Woof woof!

 

[Heather]

Okay, since everyone here is sharing their perm horror stories, I guess I will too. lol My hair has a natural wave and loose curl to it but I didnt discover this until my early 20's. My hair had been stick straight until I hit puberty and then
it just became really frizzy and unmanageable. So I got the bright idea that a perm would fix this lol I recently stumbled upon a photo of me with said poodle hair and cringed. The only reason I haven't burned it is because I'm posing with Josephine Tewson

 

[ThePowderKeg]

The pixie cut. My features are too androgynous/ not delicate enough to pull it off well. I felt really unattractive, no matter what I wore or how I did my make up.

There were a bunch of unfortunate choices while I was in junior high and high school, but I fall into that late '80s -early '90s time frame and agree with whoever it was that said those were society's beauty blunders.

 

[bunnyb.gal]

The 80's - the decade that taste forgot!

I never had a perm but my hair used to be super-frizzy so I have had some dodgy straightener jobs. Notably the one where my whole frontal hairline just frizzled off and the odd scab started to form! That was my last frequenting of that establishment you can be sure!

 

[rue]

The pixie cut. My features are too androgynous/ not delicate enough to pull it off well. I felt really unattractive, no matter what I wore or how I did my make up.

There were a bunch of unfortunate choices while I was in junior high and high school, but I fall into that late '80s -early '90s time frame and agree with whoever it was that said those were society's beauty blunders.

Ugh... I had the same experience when I cut my hair off like Demi Moore in Ghost. My hair was down to the middle of my back and I had it whacked off. HUGE mistake! I cried for days