52 Times Someone Left A Beauty Salon Looking Significantly Worse Than When They Walked In

Let's address the elephant in the room, or more accurately, the two caterpillars on everyone's foreheads. Laminated brows are responsible for more crimes against the human face than anything else on this list. The treatment, which essentially glues your brow hairs upward into a brushed-up fluffy effect, works beautifully when done correctly and looks like you lost a bet when it doesn't.

The line between "model off duty" and "startled Victorian chimney sweep" is razor thin, and a surprising number of technicians have discovered that line by crossing it entirely, on someone else's face, with no way back.

The laminated brow conversation got super messy in 2023 when Kylie Jenner and Hailey Bieber posted a video together that many viewers interpreted as a very thinly veiled dig at Selena Gomez's laminated brows. The internet, who would walk through fire for Selena Gomez, noticed immediately and responded accordingly.

What followed was a full-scale social media trial that lasted approximately seventy-two hours and resulted in Hailey Bieber crying on camera and the word "laminated" being searched more times in one week than it had been in its entire existence. All of this over eyebrows. Magnificent, chaotic, completely on-brand for 2023.

In some good news for anyone whose eyes have been slowly disappearing behind increasingly architectural lash sets, the era of the heavy, multi-layered false lash is officially winding down. According to Glam, the stacked, dramatic falsies that dominated the last decade are being replaced by lightweight, peptide-infused lashes and individual flares applied only to the outer corners for a subtle eye-lift effect.

The goal is to make your eyes look bigger and more awake rather than like two chandeliers fighting for space on your face. Progress. Real, measurable, very welcome progress.

Before we judge these salon fails too harshly, a brief history lesson in the name of perspective. In the early 20th century, a French cosmetics line called Tho-Radia marketed face creams, makeup, and toothpaste containing actual radioactive elements (radium and thorium) with the promise that they would firm skin, remove wrinkles, and make your complexion glow.

They were not wrong about the glow. They were catastrophically wrong about everything else. Women applied radioactive cream to their faces in pursuit of beauty, which puts a slightly uneven gel manicure into very sharp perspective. Bad nails grow out. Radiation sickness is considerably less convenient.

Tho-Radia was not even the worst of it. Meet arsenic complexion wafers, an actual over-the-counter Victorian beauty product that women literally ate in pursuit of the fashionable ghostly pale complexion of the era. Manufacturers like Dr. Campbell marketed them as completely safe, which they were not, at all, even slightly.

Regular ingestion of arsenic causes things like organ damage, skin lesions, and an early grave. Women were nibbling on toxic wafers for translucent skin while the beauty industry called it wellness. So the next time a nail technician applies your gel slightly thicker than requested, remember that at least nobody is asking you to eat anything.

And yet, for every person wincing at the fails in this list, there is someone on TikTok actively celebrating the most maximalist, unhinged beauty looks imaginable and absolutely thriving. The "M to the B" trend took the platform by storm, with thousands of creators leaning fully into the iconic heavy Geordie makeup aesthetic of bold brows, dramatic liner, and full glam dialled to eleven.

They all wore it with the energy of someone who has never once considered toning it down and never will. It became a love letter to unapologetic, over-the-top glamour from the northeast of England, and honestly? The confidence is immaculate. Beauty, it turns out, is not a Pinterest board. It's a feeling. And some people feel it loudest in a full set of acrylics and a cut crease you can see from space.

Here is something the beauty industry does not advertise loudly enough: becoming a licensed manicurist is really hard. You need real, formal qualifications to legally work on someone's nails, which makes the fails in this list even worse. Even Amanda Bynes enrolled in cosmetology school in 2022 and failed her written board exam at least three to four times.

This was before she announced she would be returning to beauty school to study the theory properly before retaking the test. So if your nail tech is licensed, perhaps extend a little more gratitude than usual. They earned it. Probably multiple times.

Beauty is chaos, beauty is joy, and occasionally beauty is a laminated brow situation that takes three weeks to grow out and a full year to emotionally process. The fails in this list are not just funny; they are a reminder that the pursuit of looking and feeling good is a wonderfully human, wonderfully messy endeavour.

One that has involved radioactive face cream, arsenic wafers, and a viral TikTok beef about eyebrows that somehow united the entire internet in 2023. Through all of it, people keep sitting in the chair, handing over the reference photo, and hoping for the best. And most of the time, it works out beautifully. Most of the time.

What is the worst crime a beautician has committed against you? Share your trauma with us in the comments!