10 Beauty Fails We All Made As Teenagers

Online retailer Hairtrade.com have put together for us a huge list of teenage hair and beauty horrors, to remind us of what we used to think looked ‘good’, before contouring, smoky eyes and strong brows even existed. The latest video trend sweeping through YouTube is the #HighSchoolMakeupChallenge which showed that even the best beauty bloggers in the business still used to get in wrong back in the day. Things like heavy black eyeliner, baby pink lipstick and bright neon blush are just some of the makeup products that we (and even some of the beauty bloggers) wish we could forget we wore. Here are the worst hair and beauty horrors from our teenage years:

1. Concealer Lips

Remember the days when a ‘nude lip’ was achieved by coating your entire lips with concealer the same colour as your skin? We do, and we only wish someone would have told us that a concealer in the shape of a lipstick DOES NOT mean it is one.

2. Bad Clip-In Hair Extensions

Getting your first pair of hair extensions is always a monumental moment. But let’s not forget how uneducated you seem to be when it comes to colour matching and taking care of them. Who can remember having extensions that didn’t blend into your normal hair and were really badly taken care of? We’re so happy we have now mastered the art.

3. Using Concealer as a Foundation

Before the days of foundation brushes, contouring and blending, the art of makeup was achieved by rubbing a concealer into the skin and hoping for the best. Eventually upgrading to a foundation, then having one that was always two shades darker and a little too orange. We’re very glad we’ve now mastered the art of blending, and we thank the heavens for the creation of beauty sponges and makeup brushes.

4. Overly-Plucked Eyebrows

Getting your hands on your mum’s tweezers may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but after a little too much plucking it always ended up a complete disaster. Then attempting to draw them on ended up being an even worse fate. Now we’re always extra careful whenever we handle those tweezers.

5. Kohl Eyeliner in Eyelids

We all remember rocking the ‘gothic’ eye makeup look, which usually consisted of covering your inner eyelids with a kohl eyeliner pencil, followed by using seven coats of mascara. This catastrophic make-up look still haunts us in our nightmares.

6. Side Fringes

One trend that everyone used to rock. The side fringe was very common back in ’07, and generally consisted of parting your hair to one side and sweeping it across your forehead.

7. Pink Make-Up Products

Nothing screams being a teenage girl more than a pink beauty product. Coating your cheeks with hot pink blush or using baby pink lipstick were both common back in the day.

8. Bronzer

To make that foundation seem even darker, an extra coating of bronzer all over the face always seemed like the best idea. This always ended up looking so ridiculous and often made the inside of our school shirts a nice shade of orange.

9. Headbands on Forehead

A popular trend a few years back was wearing headbands just below the hairline and underneath your super trendy ‘side fringe’. This is one hair accessory that we hope never comes back in style.

10.Backcombed Hair and Quiffs

Who could forget the backcombed hair trend? This was a popular look back in the day that consisted of using a fine toothcomb to backcomb the top of your hair into a large quiff and the surrounding hair to give it ‘volume’. We thank the hair heavens that we’ve discovered the art of blow-drying and using voluminous hairspray to achieve big hair nowadays.

Alicia Joy