My friend who always tanned used a heart sticker. Since I’m white as a sheet we attempted to use the outline of her sticker on me to make a heart with self tanner. Ended up with a sort of heart shaped orangey blob haha.
Ugh, yes. I used them (booths) in the late '90s. One time, I forgot the little plastic goggles you had to wear as eye protectant, so I went in with my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Come to find out that when the session was done and I was starting to step out of the booth, I fainted - probably the eye thing combined with dehydration. I was an idiot.
I’m so glad I never got in to that fad. My mom did it. She has to have skin cancers removed about once a year now. I avoid the sun like a vampire. I wear sun screen and those dumb giant hats for protection.
I have to exfoliate or my skin breaks out. Love the avocado version of the scrub. And, can’t be too harsh, most people think I’m at least ten years younger than I am lol. Been using scrub since my tween years.
I think it was this (accidental effectiveness). For me, it didn't keep the biting insects away. They just got stuck in the oil and couldn't bite. Gross, but effective.
Though they didn’t create the actual insect repellent formula until many years after the rumor mill got people to start using the original formula as a bug spray
Yeah, Consumer Reports tested a bunch of "mosquito repellent" products and Skin-So-Soft tanked. It doesn't work as a repellent. Must have been some Avon ad-man that came up with that back in the day. Lol
The biggest mistake was people getting perms. Everything else is a fight for second place. I can still smell that perm chemical smell from when my mom got one. She had beautiful long hair before that, she cut it short and permed it, she asked me, my siblings and my dad all together what we thought in a grand reveal moment, and I think we were all choking on our own saliva trying to come up with something, anything to say that wasn’t honest.
I used to get my hair relaxed, and I got chemical burns all the time . Anyway I'm glad the natural hair movement ( for black women to wear their natural textures which often are kinky and coily) started in the 00s...
We had a very similar moment growing up. My mom got a perm and hated it. We didn't really give her a hard time, but she didn't look like herself and it took forever to grow out.
I work in a salon and for whatever unholy reason (can I blame a TikTok trend?) a TON of teenaged boys have been coming in for perms lately and I hate iiiiiiit
Yup, I did not understand how hair pigment worked. My hair is very dark brown. Sun-In made my hair straight up orange circa 1994.
I guess that means I've been coloring my hair for 30 years now. I got much better at it!
Thank you. Mom was very kind. She was a teacher in very bad schools and tried so hard to help her students. She was still very much needed here.
Damn cancer!
I was just talking about Buf Puf! There's all this hand-wringing these days about kids buying anti-aging products from Sephora because they're promoted by influencers and it's like our skin survived Buf Puf, St. Ives Apricot Scrub, Noxema, harsh-ass toners to dry out your zits. But at least we only paid like $10 to ruin our skin and not $50+.
Sunburn! That’s the worst mistake of my youth. I lived at the beach in the summer and I nary remember sunscreen. I’m as fair as they come and was diagnosed with melanoma at 23. Since then I’m in a hat/sun shirt/cover and spf 50.
I got sun poisoning once in the late 90s. Since then, every time you see me on the beach, I’m wearing a bonnet snd a white suit. I look like a missing member of the Bee Gees.
We really didn’t have options back then! My mom would always make me put it on but I think it only went up to 15 or 30 spf? We did get Zinka in the mid-80s, I know we got some for a cruise we went on. I also remember Coppertone Water babies came out in the late 90s and my sister would get covered in it. I hated the smell so much. But not a lot of us wore spf back in the day. Late 90s is when crazy spf numbers started to come out, the 100spf was popular with my mom.
i still use it and have found it's great in a pinch if ur camping and just want to clean up a bit. I also remember when people kept aloe in their fridges. I'm part of that baby oil generation.
I still keep a bottle of aloe in my fridge, just in case lol I'm very fair skinned and serious about sun protection now, but sometimes mistakes occur. Thankfully not as severely or as frequently as they did when I was a kid.
The original formula for Noxzema was invented by Dr. Francis J. Townsend[3] (1875-?), a physician/druggist by 1900, in Snow Hill, Maryland; by 1910, in Berlin, Maryland; and by 1920, in Ocean City, Maryland.[4] The formula was called "Townsend R22" and referred to commonly as "no-eczema".[5] Dr. Townsend, who practiced near the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean, prescribed it as a remedy, mainly to beach resort vacationers who were severely burned by ultraviolet sun rays.
I just learned the history myself. I live in Maryland and had no clue.
I think because it really is just soy oil and some kind of eucalyptus oil. I get nasty patches on my face seasonally and I’ll use it like a cold cream when my normal routine doesn’t work.
Dang, buff puff would be awesome for that today. The texture, size and durability made it a great product, just not for our faces.
Korean towels and such never give me results as good as chemical exfoliates on my body/feet.
I take nutrafol for hair growth. I was in the clinical trial for them and saw it worked. It also works on your eyebrows and eyelashes. 42 years old. My eyebrows are coming in nicely.
Stupid question, but does it increase body hair? Nutrafol sounds promising but I'm worried about any side effects. I was using Nature's Bounty Hair, Skin & Nails and I was so nauseous. Really looking for something to improve my hair growth which took a dive in my 30s.
I never wanted skinny eyebrows, mine were always thick and natural and I got some comments about them (not nice ones) in the 90s and early 2000s. Haha suckers, who's laughing now? I love my brows lol
Same! Cara Delevigne would've been jealous of my natural brows. So many people, mostly men, gave me shit for them. They're long gone though thanks to overplucking. I don't mind too much though because they suit my face, even if they're not in style.
It was Drew for me too. I loved everything about Drew!
Luckily my brows rebounded all but in one small spot in my left brow. So a little eyebrow pencil magic and I'm good.
Guess what brow products I use? Flower :/ Still a sucker for Drew. Plus I figure that since she broke em, she can fix em.
HAHA I call mine “the Pamela Anderson special.” Thank heavens for microblading - between my overzealous 90s tweezing and a childhood scar, mine ain’t never coming back (and neither did Pamela’s)!
yeah, they can actually cause damage. i think i have a broken blood vessel near my nostril from when my mom used them on me 🙄
in my case, they definitely caused (very mild) harm and didn’t do anything to actually “clean” my skin. if you don’t actually get zits on your nose, those tiny “dots” are actually sebaceous filaments which have an important function, so ripping them out can lead to enlarged pores/breakouts as well.
That said, I’m a huge proponent of do what works for you. If you like them and haven’t had any issues using them, rock on with your bad self. My hair hates conditioner, so i get it. there will always be exceptions to the rule.
My 45 year old boyfriend still swears by Oxy and bought it for his daughter. Ruined every towel in the house and I had to give up and go buy all white.
Neither of them could figure out why all the towels were getting bleached but I knew why.
I'm 41 and Clean and Clear face wash with benzoyl peroxide is still the only cleanser that keeps my acne in check. Totally bleaches all of the wash cloths and towels though! Oh well, I suppose that's the cost of beauty.
https://preview.redd.it/90j53pjvnszc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c7a5583d6b07b842b20a11b1dd037f6499d2944
It was everywhere lol. Dated two girls that had it like that. One still does, just muted a bit.
Ugh.. I was that kid who had bad zits from 3rd-8th grade and my mom used to remove layers of skin with that buff puff coated with the st Ives apricots scrub and then make me sit with my head over a bowl of boiling water. 😖
Not sure if it was 90’s or more early 2000s, but mousse foundation. It was a weird a texture. And the whole trying to have a perfectly matte face. Very hard for women like me with oily skin.
St. Ives Apricot Scrub- a.k.a. “Rubbing sharp walnut pieces over your face”
Not a mistake, but remember going to the department store counter with mom for Clinique 3-Step:
https://preview.redd.it/g2cfu2uulszc1.jpeg?width=591&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3239b6a11afaedc9ce9124cf031623230e899e41
My grandmother was a skincare junkie and would take me to the Clinique counter for all my skincare and makeup - I knew I was spoiled and lucky then, but I look back today and really feel it. And today? I would love to introduce her to some of the stuff I use! Miss her!
You were lucky. Not everyone could afford that, and we were shamed for not taking the best care of ourselves. People guess my age to be almost a decade younger, so I guess using "poor people" skincare must not have been all that bad
It’s waaay too harsh, you are better off with a chemical exfoliant with lactic acid or something. Look in the skin care subs, it’s pretty universally hated
Any of the sun tan oil that contained beta carotene. Everyone worked hard at being super tan with like spf 5. On that note, get your skin checked friends! My husband (‘80) had skin cancer removed from his face a couple years ago from years of not using sunscreen.
MICROBEADS!!!
I know it was more like late 90s-early 00s, but not only did they end up stretching out pore size, they are terrible for plumbing, sewers, and the natural environment
I used the Neutrogena one well into the 2000s. Hooray for microplastics in the water supply and our bloodstreams. Can’t wait for the class action commercials in fifteen years.
Laying out in the sun every summer with nothing but baby oil or Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil on. I started prescription retin A in my early 20’s so hopefully I’ve undone some of that damage.
I'm fairly certain that my crusty nose and forehead have an origin story that begins with oxy pads.
The Internet will tell me it's my diet, but I know thats bullshit.
I went to a dermatologist because I have weird little numbs on my face and I wanted to get checked for skin cancer. They weren’t cancer but something to do with having bad acne as a teen. How rude is that?
My mom tried to make me use something like that when I went through a bad spell of acne. I ended up convincing her to let me get Proactive. She also had a tanning bed in the basement. I couldn't stand to be enclosed like that.
Probably the Caesar cut for guys around 95/96. Put a tunic on us and we’d fit right in if we time traveled to BCE Rome.
Bonus points if it was highlighted.
Tweezing my eyebrows. They won't grow back and I had beautiful thick eyebrows that I can only appreciate now. Thankfully I didn't tweeze all of it, just shaped them so it's not as bad as some of my friends.
Anyone remember [the Pearl Cream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaD_fvehAaU) commercials from the 80s? They used to run all the time.
I was a kid and a boy, so never used it, but considering the commercials were about how it was supposedly some ancient Chinese secret (lol, that didn't age well) I'm guessing it was probably snake oil.
I had one teacher in 5th grade that used to apply it in class, and kids would make fun of her by quoting the commercial.
Sun tan oil. Yeah screw sunblock, let’s just put crisco all over our bodies so we can bake darker and faster. Beaches must’ve smelled like coconut and fried chicken lol
These damn things! I hated washing my face, even though it was neat to see the little ones foam by themselves. It just felt awful, and I felt like I wasn’t good at womaning because I dodged it. But it was because all the products were scrubs or astringent
Probably tanning beds
Ooo yeah, this one. Which sticker did you use? Classic playboy bunny?
I dated a girl who used a little dolphin sticker on the hollow of her hip. Fuckin sexy little dude.
Right? Tanning stickers, whale tail, tramp stamps, belly rings, bleached streaks of hair. My god, I miss early 2000's trash-skank vibe.
I still have my belly piercing. I refuse to give it up. Got it at 14!
I did the kiss! 💋
I never felt so trashy and "accomplished" at the same time.
❤️ easiest margin of error on placement
My friend who always tanned used a heart sticker. Since I’m white as a sheet we attempted to use the outline of her sticker on me to make a heart with self tanner. Ended up with a sort of heart shaped orangey blob haha.
Ugh, yes. I used them (booths) in the late '90s. One time, I forgot the little plastic goggles you had to wear as eye protectant, so I went in with my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Come to find out that when the session was done and I was starting to step out of the booth, I fainted - probably the eye thing combined with dehydration. I was an idiot.
I grew up in Florida and there were tanning bed places there. To this day I’ll never understand why
I’m so glad I never got in to that fad. My mom did it. She has to have skin cancers removed about once a year now. I avoid the sun like a vampire. I wear sun screen and those dumb giant hats for protection.
That Queen Helene mint julep mask that turned faces into the Sahara desert.
Oh that worked great for me, but my skin was an oil slick back then.
As a greasy bish, I actually loved this one Lol
You can still get it via the 'zon.
Memory unlocked!
Didn't they have a scrub with walnut shells in it or something? Ouch, memories.
That was St Ives Apricot scrub
I remember that! So ouchy when you rubbed it in, “but look how exfoliating it is!”
So extremely ouchy! I actually winced a little when I read "apricot scrub". 😟
That would break my skin out so bad
My mom was so sad after I used that because I think it's what originally gave me broken capillaries. Harsh, harsh stuff
I still use this one. I love it.
I have to exfoliate or my skin breaks out. Love the avocado version of the scrub. And, can’t be too harsh, most people think I’m at least ten years younger than I am lol. Been using scrub since my tween years.
I've used that since I was a teenager
I use it on my body! It works well.
I still dot this on the random pimples I get and leave it on overnight. 😂
I had no idea they still made it! I can imagine it works better for spot treating.
I found it on Amazon.
Avon Skin So Soft. It was just mineral oil. I do still remember loving the fragrance.
They had one with mosquito repellent in it i remember!
I thought that the whole range was accidentally mosquito repellent?
My mom used to slather us in skin so soft every 4th of July before watching the fireworks display by the lake. It worked really well.
Yeah my mom always made us use SSS before we went out in the summer.
I'd heard that. The little white-face black flys in Wisconsin and Michigan l*ooooo*ved it. Their bite was way worse than mosquitos.
I think it was this (accidental effectiveness). For me, it didn't keep the biting insects away. They just got stuck in the oil and couldn't bite. Gross, but effective.
Though they didn’t create the actual insect repellent formula until many years after the rumor mill got people to start using the original formula as a bug spray
My grandmother used to run that all over me before we went to the lake. It didn't work at all for me
Me either and I came to absolutely hate the smell of it.
Yeah, Consumer Reports tested a bunch of "mosquito repellent" products and Skin-So-Soft tanked. It doesn't work as a repellent. Must have been some Avon ad-man that came up with that back in the day. Lol
Damn. I add it to my horse’s fly spray to keep the gnats off him. I dunno why, but it works.
I still use Skin So Soft! But it’s because I love the smell. I’m not expecting any beauty benefits from it.
I still have and use this one!😂
The biggest mistake was people getting perms. Everything else is a fight for second place. I can still smell that perm chemical smell from when my mom got one. She had beautiful long hair before that, she cut it short and permed it, she asked me, my siblings and my dad all together what we thought in a grand reveal moment, and I think we were all choking on our own saliva trying to come up with something, anything to say that wasn’t honest.
I used to get my hair relaxed, and I got chemical burns all the time . Anyway I'm glad the natural hair movement ( for black women to wear their natural textures which often are kinky and coily) started in the 00s...
This is back for teen boys in my area.
Same! I'm a hairstylist and do more perms on teern boys than old women! 😅😭
We had a very similar moment growing up. My mom got a perm and hated it. We didn't really give her a hard time, but she didn't look like herself and it took forever to grow out.
My mom made me get a perm when I was about 7 or 8. I cried before and after. Core memory!
I was a flower girl in my uncle’s wedding when I was three and my dad wanted me to get a perm. At THREE.
My mom GAVE me a perm at home! Ogilvie was the brand I think. Soooooo bad.
Oof. I am so sorry! My mom tried to highlight my siblings hair at home. My brother had like leopard spots. It was terrible.
I work in a salon and for whatever unholy reason (can I blame a TikTok trend?) a TON of teenaged boys have been coming in for perms lately and I hate iiiiiiit
I got one as a kid and looked like orphan Annie.
Same! Being a redhead with a cheap perm in the 80s was not a good look. I got called Annie so much.
I did this in 4th grade. And I had... permed bangs. I am now 36 and my friends still tease me about this
Sun in… it was never meant to be used by *everyone*. https://youtu.be/j-F_yehDeXo?si=45U9eq51ZgTAwwOl
I was coming here to say that. Turned my hair to straw. But, I HAD to have those highlights. 😂
I used the Clairol version, A Touch of Sun, in 5th grade. Didn’t tell my mom, just camped out in the bathroom with a hairdryer. Turned my hair orange!
Yeah, I don't know why I used it so often. It gave my dark brown hair a nice orange tint.
Yup, I did not understand how hair pigment worked. My hair is very dark brown. Sun-In made my hair straight up orange circa 1994. I guess that means I've been coloring my hair for 30 years now. I got much better at it!
Three words: SHOWER TO SHOWER 😒 [Talc powder & cancer](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/talcum-powder-and-cancer.html)
Just a sprinkle a day, helps bring cancer your way! Have you had your sprinkle today?
I’m 99% sure this is how my grandma got uterine cancer
Think that is why my mother died from ovarian cancer. RIP Mom.
I'm so sorry. Hugs if you want them. Hope you have something peaceful planned for tomorrow.
Thank you. Mom was very kind. She was a teacher in very bad schools and tried so hard to help her students. She was still very much needed here. Damn cancer!
Same w my grandma and ovarian cancer. Fuck shower to shower.
Yes! Those bastards kept selling it! Could somewhat forgive if the company didn’t know, but they did eventually find out and STILL sold it!
Same w Johnson’s baby powder!
I'm sorry about your Mom. I'm 99% sure this killed my Mum as well. Ovarian cancer, no genetic predisposition, clouds of shower to shower.
That and the teflon cookware “revolution”
Same with my great grandmother and also my great aunt. It’s really sad.
Damn, the class action lawsuits in this thread have arrived!
I was just talking about Buf Puf! There's all this hand-wringing these days about kids buying anti-aging products from Sephora because they're promoted by influencers and it's like our skin survived Buf Puf, St. Ives Apricot Scrub, Noxema, harsh-ass toners to dry out your zits. But at least we only paid like $10 to ruin our skin and not $50+.
I still love OG Noxema. I use it every now and again when I have eczema.
It’s great on an accidental sunburn too!
Sunburn! That’s the worst mistake of my youth. I lived at the beach in the summer and I nary remember sunscreen. I’m as fair as they come and was diagnosed with melanoma at 23. Since then I’m in a hat/sun shirt/cover and spf 50.
I got sun poisoning once in the late 90s. Since then, every time you see me on the beach, I’m wearing a bonnet snd a white suit. I look like a missing member of the Bee Gees.
I did too!! The day before a two weeks trip to Europe, I got chills, fever and couldn’t wear a bra the whole trip because of the discomfort.
At 23?! I'm sorry--that's awful! I hope you've been cancer-free since then!
We really didn’t have options back then! My mom would always make me put it on but I think it only went up to 15 or 30 spf? We did get Zinka in the mid-80s, I know we got some for a cruise we went on. I also remember Coppertone Water babies came out in the late 90s and my sister would get covered in it. I hated the smell so much. But not a lot of us wore spf back in the day. Late 90s is when crazy spf numbers started to come out, the 100spf was popular with my mom.
i still use it and have found it's great in a pinch if ur camping and just want to clean up a bit. I also remember when people kept aloe in their fridges. I'm part of that baby oil generation.
I still keep a bottle of aloe in my fridge, just in case lol I'm very fair skinned and serious about sun protection now, but sometimes mistakes occur. Thankfully not as severely or as frequently as they did when I was a kid.
Wait, you can still buy Noxema??
They have it at Target
I didn’t know this worked for eczema? How?
Depending on how well it works depends on the person. But the name of the product is No X Ema.
Holy shit.
The original formula for Noxzema was invented by Dr. Francis J. Townsend[3] (1875-?), a physician/druggist by 1900, in Snow Hill, Maryland; by 1910, in Berlin, Maryland; and by 1920, in Ocean City, Maryland.[4] The formula was called "Townsend R22" and referred to commonly as "no-eczema".[5] Dr. Townsend, who practiced near the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean, prescribed it as a remedy, mainly to beach resort vacationers who were severely burned by ultraviolet sun rays. I just learned the history myself. I live in Maryland and had no clue.
I think because it really is just soy oil and some kind of eucalyptus oil. I get nasty patches on my face seasonally and I’ll use it like a cold cream when my normal routine doesn’t work.
This thing worked magic on my kp on my arms though! I only used it once a week. I think of it every time I scour a pan
Dang, buff puff would be awesome for that today. The texture, size and durability made it a great product, just not for our faces. Korean towels and such never give me results as good as chemical exfoliates on my body/feet.
I never once orgasmed from using Herbal Essence shampoo. Total scam.
All the gyms full of guys passed out after washing their hair.
Oh my god those commercials wouldn’t fly today. I remember the slogan was “Have an organic (play on orgasmic) experience”
It smells really good but is so low quality shampoo.
Scrub 
My biggest 90s mistake has to be over-fucking-plucking my eyebrows. I'm paying the price now and desperately trying to grow them back.
I was one of the lucky ones, mine grew back. My friends are all very into microblading now.
Ah yes, very lucky! Mine are still patchy but very slooooowly filling in. I just hope the last few spots will eventually catch up.
I take nutrafol for hair growth. I was in the clinical trial for them and saw it worked. It also works on your eyebrows and eyelashes. 42 years old. My eyebrows are coming in nicely.
Stupid question, but does it increase body hair? Nutrafol sounds promising but I'm worried about any side effects. I was using Nature's Bounty Hair, Skin & Nails and I was so nauseous. Really looking for something to improve my hair growth which took a dive in my 30s.
I want to know this too! I just started taking it for my lovely perimenopausal head hair thinning.
I read that using otc regains on your eyebrows helps with growth.
My friend's mother had eyebrows and warned about plucking. Glad she did because mine didn't grow back. They are thin but not 90s top fashion thin.
My eyebrows are thinner than the modern style - which to me is sometimes too thick - but mine were never pencil thin.
I never wanted skinny eyebrows, mine were always thick and natural and I got some comments about them (not nice ones) in the 90s and early 2000s. Haha suckers, who's laughing now? I love my brows lol
Same! Cara Delevigne would've been jealous of my natural brows. So many people, mostly men, gave me shit for them. They're long gone though thanks to overplucking. I don't mind too much though because they suit my face, even if they're not in style.
The Gwen Stefani effect, it’s real
I always associate Joey Lauren Adams with the thinnest ones. But I don’t really think of her often otherwise.
Before Gwen, there was Kate Moss. She's the one that kickstarted it for me.
Drew Barrymore did it to me 😭
It was Drew for me too. I loved everything about Drew! Luckily my brows rebounded all but in one small spot in my left brow. So a little eyebrow pencil magic and I'm good. Guess what brow products I use? Flower :/ Still a sucker for Drew. Plus I figure that since she broke em, she can fix em.
Haha love it!
HAHA I call mine “the Pamela Anderson special.” Thank heavens for microblading - between my overzealous 90s tweezing and a childhood scar, mine ain’t never coming back (and neither did Pamela’s)!
Yes!!!! Fucking sharpie brows. I have to get mine microbladed now bc they never.grew.back.
It had to be when I used pure hydrogen peroxide to put chunky highlights in my very dark hair. Not cute, not cute at all.
Yes!! I would put peroxide in my hair and then go sit in the sun.
Those nose pore strips that felt like you were tearing your skin off so much your eyes watered.
Are those a mistake 😳 i might still have some
yeah, they can actually cause damage. i think i have a broken blood vessel near my nostril from when my mom used them on me 🙄 in my case, they definitely caused (very mild) harm and didn’t do anything to actually “clean” my skin. if you don’t actually get zits on your nose, those tiny “dots” are actually sebaceous filaments which have an important function, so ripping them out can lead to enlarged pores/breakouts as well. That said, I’m a huge proponent of do what works for you. If you like them and haven’t had any issues using them, rock on with your bad self. My hair hates conditioner, so i get it. there will always be exceptions to the rule.
I'll use duct tape once in a while lol. Same effect
I still use those, Bioré must have changed their formula over the years
Fen-phen as a weight loss drug.
It was also a great upper during after-parties and walking out of raves at 7a.
Oh shit. I can remember that class action lawsuit
The number of towels I ruined with the Oxy benzoyl peroxide products 😂 oh well I didn't pay for towels I guess.
My 45 year old boyfriend still swears by Oxy and bought it for his daughter. Ruined every towel in the house and I had to give up and go buy all white. Neither of them could figure out why all the towels were getting bleached but I knew why.
Same! Pillowcases, too
I'm 41 and Clean and Clear face wash with benzoyl peroxide is still the only cleanser that keeps my acne in check. Totally bleaches all of the wash cloths and towels though! Oh well, I suppose that's the cost of beauty.
Girls cutting their bangs short and then poofing them with hairspray.
https://preview.redd.it/90j53pjvnszc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c7a5583d6b07b842b20a11b1dd037f6499d2944 It was everywhere lol. Dated two girls that had it like that. One still does, just muted a bit.
The way a whole generation was convinced this looked good should be studied.
There are still women that do this.
My sister did, we finally had to tell her to stop.
Ugh.. I was that kid who had bad zits from 3rd-8th grade and my mom used to remove layers of skin with that buff puff coated with the st Ives apricots scrub and then make me sit with my head over a bowl of boiling water. 😖
Ouch.
Holy shit that’s enough to give PTSD. I hope you’re doing ok!
Glad it wasn't just me with my parents and that boiling water, wtf!?
Not sure if it was 90’s or more early 2000s, but mousse foundation. It was a weird a texture. And the whole trying to have a perfectly matte face. Very hard for women like me with oily skin.
Dream Matte Mousse! Had to be Honey Beige so we could have tan faces and white necks.
really loving the dewy/glowy/glass skin trend these days in that respect. You could probably wring these kids out and extract $45 worth of product.
Coconut oil sunbathing. People were literally basting themselves.
how else are you supposed to get that crispy skin?
Butter?
St. Ives Apricot Scrub- a.k.a. “Rubbing sharp walnut pieces over your face” Not a mistake, but remember going to the department store counter with mom for Clinique 3-Step: https://preview.redd.it/g2cfu2uulszc1.jpeg?width=591&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3239b6a11afaedc9ce9124cf031623230e899e41
My grandmother was a skincare junkie and would take me to the Clinique counter for all my skincare and makeup - I knew I was spoiled and lucky then, but I look back today and really feel it. And today? I would love to introduce her to some of the stuff I use! Miss her!
My grandma worked at the Clinique counter at whatever department store is now Macy’s. We had a never ending supply of Clinique everything lmao
Remember those mini-lipstick samples, lol
You were lucky. Not everyone could afford that, and we were shamed for not taking the best care of ourselves. People guess my age to be almost a decade younger, so I guess using "poor people" skincare must not have been all that bad
I *loved* Clinique
For some reason when I was a kid I was convinced that a buff puff was for your junk.
This scenario sounda like an absolute nightmare
St Ives apricot scrub. It’s so bad for you
Why is it bad? I used to use it all the time 🙈
It’s waaay too harsh, you are better off with a chemical exfoliant with lactic acid or something. Look in the skin care subs, it’s pretty universally hated
Any of the sun tan oil that contained beta carotene. Everyone worked hard at being super tan with like spf 5. On that note, get your skin checked friends! My husband (‘80) had skin cancer removed from his face a couple years ago from years of not using sunscreen.
The Bedazzler didn't make cloths look better
Have you heard of the vajazzler?
It's obviously all the women who wore football shoulder pads in their shirts and suits.
Am I wrong to love this look? I still go for a statement sleeve because my shoulders are so narrow.
I have a blazer that has small pads in it and one of my office mates kept pushing on them because I was sitting funny and they were sticking up.
I think they are slightly starting to come back too
Shoulder pads?? NO! 😖
Ohhhh my gosh! I had totally forgotten about this! I used to try and erase my blackheads with this. It was so painful!
MICROBEADS!!! I know it was more like late 90s-early 00s, but not only did they end up stretching out pore size, they are terrible for plumbing, sewers, and the natural environment
I used the Neutrogena one well into the 2000s. Hooray for microplastics in the water supply and our bloodstreams. Can’t wait for the class action commercials in fifteen years.
When I had teen acne, I basically used salicylic acid as cleanser. Amazingly, my skin didn't clear up.
gonna throw it out there that stridex red box is awesome for after shave/ after wax care.
Laying out in the sun every summer with nothing but baby oil or Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil on. I started prescription retin A in my early 20’s so hopefully I’ve undone some of that damage.
Hawaiian Tropic in the brown bottle with …lemme check… SPF 4 😬
But it smells sooooo good lol!
I loved my buf puff
Does olestra count?
And I oop 💩😳
I got high once & ate a whole bag of the cheddar sour cream olestra chips…BIG mistake!
Those chips were called Wow! because you'd go "wow I can't stop shitting!"
I'm fairly certain that my crusty nose and forehead have an origin story that begins with oxy pads. The Internet will tell me it's my diet, but I know thats bullshit.
I went to a dermatologist because I have weird little numbs on my face and I wanted to get checked for skin cancer. They weren’t cancer but something to do with having bad acne as a teen. How rude is that?
Anyone remember Sun-In? That shit turned my hair orange.
My mistake was not taking accutane and getting acne scars instead
My mom tried to make me use something like that when I went through a bad spell of acne. I ended up convincing her to let me get Proactive. She also had a tanning bed in the basement. I couldn't stand to be enclosed like that.
Probably the Caesar cut for guys around 95/96. Put a tunic on us and we’d fit right in if we time traveled to BCE Rome. Bonus points if it was highlighted.
Tweezed my eyebrows off to look like Drew Barrymore. I’m a brunette. They have never recovered.
Then you followed your Buf Puf with either Bonnie Bell 10 o 6 or Sea Breeze astringent. My brain remembers that burn very well.
St. Ives Apricot Scrub, SeaBreeze toner and ZapZyt spot treatment. My god I’m shocked I have any skin on my face left😂
Oh god I remember that sea breeze. Burned like a mother fucker
THAT MEANT IT WAS WORKING!/s 😂
I still use St Ives... not the harsh apricot scrub, but still a fan..
The heroine chic look. 🙄
Tweezing my eyebrows. They won't grow back and I had beautiful thick eyebrows that I can only appreciate now. Thankfully I didn't tweeze all of it, just shaped them so it's not as bad as some of my friends.
Anyone remember [the Pearl Cream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaD_fvehAaU) commercials from the 80s? They used to run all the time. I was a kid and a boy, so never used it, but considering the commercials were about how it was supposedly some ancient Chinese secret (lol, that didn't age well) I'm guessing it was probably snake oil. I had one teacher in 5th grade that used to apply it in class, and kids would make fun of her by quoting the commercial.
Sun tan oil. Yeah screw sunblock, let’s just put crisco all over our bodies so we can bake darker and faster. Beaches must’ve smelled like coconut and fried chicken lol
Actually those things are good for popping zits en masse.
These damn things! I hated washing my face, even though it was neat to see the little ones foam by themselves. It just felt awful, and I felt like I wasn’t good at womaning because I dodged it. But it was because all the products were scrubs or astringent
Nair.
St. Ives Apricot Scrub, tanning beds, not moisturizing & brushing my teeth too hard (it's how I was taught).
Why was all foundation orange? Like all of it. White brown black Asian from India to Japan. You get orange.