(Beauty)

Beauty Trends We’re Just Not Buying

by Stephanie Montes

Thanks to the current power of Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube, it doesn’t take much for something to become a trend. With tutorials on “strobing” and “hair plopping” flooding social media, it’s a confusing time to be a beauty girl. Here, five beauty trends (and we use that phrase loosely) that are causing us to raise an eyebrow.

Strobing

What it is: Apply highlighter on cheekbones, brow bones, the center of your forehead, down your nose and on your chin.

Why we're skeptical: So, this is basically contouring—without the darker shades. In other words, it's just another way of saying you've used a heavy hand to apply highlighter.

Hair Plopping

What it is: Wrapping wet hair in T-shirts and pillowcases to dry and cut frizz.

Why we're skeptical: Wait, how is this different than using a towel?

Clown Contouring

What it is: Painting pictures on your face with makeup and then blending it for a contoured look.

Why we're skeptical: What happened to good, old highlighter and bronzer? Drawing on a clown face not only seems unnecessary, but we can only imagine it results in thick, caked-on makeup (and potentially nightmares).

Ombre Eyebrows

What it is: When eyebrows start off lightly drawn and fade to be a darker shade as they move out to the sides of the face.

Why we're skeptical: We just personally prefer a more natural approach to brows.

Sand-Art Hair

What it is: Ribbons and ribbons of brightly colored rainbow hair.

Why we're skeptical: Although this might have been our dream look when we were 7 years old and loved Rainbow Bright, we've grown out of our unicorns-and-mermaids phase.