In fact, when we asked everyone from Kerry Washington to Gwen Stefani about their biggest beauty regrets, their answers focused not on errant lip colors or regrettable '80s perms. Nope, they were all about the arches.
Read ahead to hear about their cringe-worthy beauty fails — and what they did to undo the damage.
Lucy Hale
Hale may be known for her bold brows, but that wasn't always the case. When asked about her biggest beauty regret, thePretty Little Liars star said, "When I was younger, I would say, over-plucking my eyebrows. I’m very lucky that they grew back."
While Hale barely touches her brows now, the past is a different story. "I was always the little girl with a unibrow. And then, I went through a brow evolution of different looks," Hale told Cosmopolitan. "Now I don't really do anything to them. Because I've had horror stories where either I over-plucked them, or finally they grew back out and I let someone touch them, and it was a disaster... And it's been a couple of years now, and I've finally found the shape that worked for me, so all I do is fill them in a little bit. Long live the big brow!"
Kendall Jenner
As a model, Jenner has had to deal with plenty of image makeovers. "I've been asked to alter my appearance in so many ways, it's not even funny!" she wrote on her website and app.
Unfortunately, her brows don't always survive the process — especially when bleach is involved (like at Marc Jacobs' fall 2016 show). "I think the worst is when designers want to mess with my eyebrows... It always freaks me out because every time they do it, I lose them. They literally fall OUT! It's bad — I really hate getting a bleach," Jenner wrote. Yikes.
Gwen Stefani
Kendall's not the only one with a bleached-eyebrow horror story. Gwen Stefani, who rocked them on a shoot once, loved them — but the grow-out process didn't go so well. "When they start to grow out and turn yellow, it's not cute," she told Refinery29. So Stefani took matters into her own hands.
“I had gone to my parents' house in Anaheim and was like, ‘I’m done, I gotta dye them back. I can't deal with this now.’ So I went down to some taqueria/salon — everything was closed, and I couldn't get the product to do it back — and the woman goes, ‘Oh yeah, I can do it.’ She didn't really speak English, and she put it on and it's burning, and I'm like, ‘I think it's burning!’" Stefani said. "So she gets paper towels and scrapes, and it's literally stinging like a tattoo into my face."
Luckily, Stefani's brows grew back — but it was still traumatizing. "I didn't even pay or anything — I just left and went home, like, ‘Oh my god, mom, what did I do?’ She had to take me to the emergency room and they were like, ‘This is going to be permanent,’" Stefani said. "I had chemical burns all over [my brows]. But I survived! I do have a scar, though.”
Demi Lovato
Many a celeb has fallen victim to the '90s ultra-thin brow trend. But going too far can go both ways.
"My ultimate beauty regret is the many shapes and forms my eyebrows have come in,"Demi Lovato told us in January. "I've had stages where they’ve been so thick where people have asked if I got eyebrow extensions, and then so thin it looks like I just drew them on."
Kerry Washington
The Scandal star, it turns out, was late to the brow game. "I waited so long to start doing my eyebrows. I think I was long graduated from college when people were kind of like, 'How 'bout those brows?'" Washington told Refinery29. "But then my mother was like, 'Once you start, you can't stop.' So then I was terrified, like, 'I don't want to have to go every month.'"
Olivia Wilde
Washington might have been lucky, however, since over-plucking at an early age can have its repercussions. “When I was 5, after watching my dad shave, I took his razor and shaved my face — including my eyebrows. You look like an alien without eyebrows,” Wilde told InStyle. “Then, in my mid-teens, I plucked them to create that sexy Kate Moss arch. I regret it because I damaged my follicles, and now it's hard for me to grow thick, bushy brows.”
Zendaya
While many recommend seeking pro brow help, it doesn't always turn out the way they want it to. "I got my eyebrows waxed once, and they messed them all up — they were super-thin," Zendaya told Twist magazine. "It was the first day of middle school, and they were uneven! It was so bad. I had to let them grow out and get super-hairy and thick."
Now, Zendaya refuses to get burned again, saying she only does her brows herself. (Along with her makeup, we might add.)
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