“I’m A Beauty Editor & This Is The Advice I’d Give To My Younger Self”
Looking back at the beauty trends I enthusiastically followed from the 80s to the early 2000s, I realise some should have come with a warning label. Sky-high quiffs, pencil-thin brows, a disastrous perm, and the great hair-straightening era powered by GHD’s iconic creations, I tried them all. At the time, I thought I looked effortlessly cool; in reality, the mirror was telling a very different story. Here, I reflect on the beauty choices I once proudly wore, and the advice I’d give my younger self now….
Lessons from trends
If there’s one thing I’d tell my younger self about beauty, it’s this: just because something is fashionable doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Unfortunately, this is wisdom that can only really be acquired after a few questionable haircuts, one tragic perm, and the permanent loss of approximately 70% of your eyebrows.
I grew up in the glorious chaos of the late 80s rolling into the 90s. Think Spice Girls, All Saints, and the Supermodel era. There were no tutorials, no gentle “clean girl” aesthetics, and certainly no TikTok skincare routines. What we had instead was hairspray, blind optimism, and the firm belief that if a celebrity did it, we absolutely should too.
Past beauty regrets
My first crime against my own face came in the form of the quiff. The bigger the hair, the better, or so we believed. I would stand in front of the mirror with a round brush, a hairdryer, and a can of hairspray. The goal was simple: get the front section of your hair to stand up in a gravity-defying wave that looked both effortless and highly engineered. It took about forty minutes, half a can of hairspray, and a lot of coughing from the spray!
What we had instead was hairspray, blind optimism, and the firm belief that if a celebrity did it, we absolutely should too.
Tamara, Contributing Beauty Editor
And then there were the eyebrows.
If you lived through the 90s, you know exactly what I’m talking about: pencil-thin brows. The thinner the better. Ideally, they should look as if they’d been drawn with a biro. My natural eyebrows, before I interfered with them, were actually quite good. Full, balanced and no need to fill them in. Did I appreciate them? Of course not. Instead, armed with a pair of tweezers and the misguided confidence of youth, I plucked them into oblivion. Night after night, hair after hair, until they were reduced to two faint lines. People used to say, “Don’t worry, they’ll grow back.”
They did not. Decades later, my eyebrows remain permanently traumatised. They are sparse, patchy, and require daily maintenance and precision when armed with an eyebrow pencil. If I could go back in time, I would never have touched them.
People used to say, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll grow back.’ They did not.
But the true low point, the beauty decision that still makes me wince slightly when I think about it, was the perm.
My older sister had one, who was just 15 months older and at the time could do no wrong; whatever she had, I wanted to copy. Curls were in. Big hair was in. The idea was that you’d walk out of the salon looking like a glamorous pop star. What happened was that I walked out looking like a poodle.
The smell alone should have been a warning. Anyone who has ever had a perm will remember that very specific chemical aroma. But I sat there patiently while rollers were wound tightly around my head and mysterious potions were applied, fully convinced I was moments away from a beauty transformation.
Several hours later, the rollers came out and the mirror revealed something that can only be described as deeply unfortunate. My hair wasn’t glossy or glamorous. It was frizzy. Dense. Slightly triangular. And absolutely nothing like the sleek curls I’d imagined. I went home in a state of horror and tears.
The smell alone should have been a warning.
For the next several weeks, I wore a hat. Not just outside, indoors too. I wore it at home. I wore it whenever visitors came round. Eventually the perm relaxed slightly, as perms tend to do, but the emotional damage lingered, to this day, I find it quite traumatising just writing about it.
Looking back now, I realise that most of these beauty disasters came from the same place: comparison. Someone else had it, so I wanted it. Looks and More magazine said it was fashionable, so I assumed it must be right.
What I’d tell my younger self
If I could offer my younger self or anyone younger, for that matter, a few pieces of beauty advice, it would be surprisingly simple:
1. Leave your eyebrows alone. Seriously. Put the tweezers down and walk away
2. Trends come and go, but your hair must live with the consequences.
3. Just because your sister/friend/celebrity has a perm does not mean you need one too.
Growing up & letting go
Beauty is much less stressful once you realise you don’t have to chase every trend that passes by. Sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing at all. However, I do think this comes with age, which also brings self-confidence in its path, and with it, comparison dies. But some lessons I suppose, simply must be learned the hard way and it’s all a part of growing up.
Beauty is much less stressful once you realise you don’t have to chase every trend that passes by.
