If I Could Turn Back Time
If we knew then, what we know now - the Beauty industry would be a different game. Today’s youth face a lot of pressure around what society’s beauty norm is & its relentless- everywhere they look, and in the palms of their hands with access to social media platforms like Instagram. The harm I caused although regretful, has made me wiser and I’m happy to help educate these young guns before they develop out dated habits. Over the next couple of posts I’m going to highlight some of the worst beauty blunders of our past & what we can do to remedy them ✔️
1️⃣ Extreme suntanning/sunbeds - this is not a known Olympic sport but we certainly treated it like one. The darker the better, going to great lengths to ensure our tans had harsh tan lines to prove it. What we didn’t know was when we got older (like late 20’s because that was grossley old to us) our cute freckles would start to morph into mottled, dirty looking sun spots & our collagen and elastin would then start to degenerate at a more rapid pace accelerating the creation of fine lines, wrinkles and sagging skin. Before we knew it POOF - we look older than our older sister. We didn’t care about moderate sun exposure to get our dose of vitamin D and instead we would bake our skin in excess with oils that guaranteed we were the darkest in our grade. I compare this to a cooking piece of steak in the microwave repeatedly- it becomes dried out, dark in color and very rough. The esthetic of our complexion is one thing, but skin cancer is the big problem and early detection is key, so being proactive with annual mole checks is imparative for those who worshipped the sun. If the damage is not too deep we can help reverse the years of damage with lasers, peels and medical skin needling- however, prevention is best so please use your sun protection and prolong your perfectly fresh baby skin for as long as you can! 🙅🏻♀️🌞
2️⃣ OverTweezing - I’m all about keeping two brows separated in the center and plucking the strays, but we took those concepts to the limit. Our brow trend was excessive plucking to the point that our poor brows won’t even grow back now - they’ve had it! When you continuously pull a hair from the follicle, over time it can cause a permanent growth stunt and bald area- which now we can fortunately correct this by drawing/ filling them in every morning with stencils, powders, and pencils OR with a Microblading tattoo. If you are blessed with big, bushy brows- trust me, keep it thick! Real hair is better than fake hair, am I right? I know I’m not alone when saying this... ladies, step away from the tweezers & book in with me for a set of natural, low maintenance face framers ASAP ✔️
3️⃣ Zit Popping- guilty as charged. Perhaps not a trend, but a big mistake nonetheless. We’ve all been known to fixate upon a microscopic pore that “is huge” and “has to go”. It’s like we black out completely and come to realizing that our fingernails performed an unsuccessful surgery on our face leaving us with bigger than before open wounds that scab over for the following week. While there is a right way to go about this, it definetly is not how we did it- picking with dirty hands, causing excess of inflammation, spreading bacteria to other areas & then scrubbing with noxema until red in the face, followed by caking makeup to cover up the new mess we caused 👎🏼 We are permanently damaging our skin by doing this in the form of acne scars - depressed rolling scars, ice pick scars and of course hyperpigmented acne scars. Fortunately these can be treated with medical skin needling and peels but may never become the once smooth skin you had pre-pick. It takes control and a ‘mind over matter’ attitude to ignore the blemishes we have, but in the long run it will be so worth it!!! Treat spots topically and walk away from the mirror.