35 Unhinged Things Women Did In Their Teens To Meet Beauty Standards

It’s well known that we’re highly impressionable during our formative years. That’s why it’s so important to educate young minds and guide them in the right direction. Unfortunately, a lack of experience can sometimes lead kids to unwittingly engage in dangerous, harmful, or otherwise inappropriate activities.

Recently, the women of TikTok who grew up under intense beauty standards have opened up about the really unhinged things they did as teens to try to meet those expectations, and the long-term consequences they now live with. Hindsight is a funny thing, and in many of these cases, it’s accompanied by a heavy dose of regret. Scroll down to read detailed stories from women around the world, sharing the extreme experiments they tried as teenagers in the name of beauty.

Woman’s teen beauty ‘hack’ sparks a wave of confessions

#1

The way I slept in saran wrap every night at 11 was criminal.

#2

I used to put salt in my eyes so that I can wear glasses and look cool😭now I have eyesight problems.

#3

When I used to nail file my teeth to look like vampire teeth.

#4

I scrubbed my front teeth so hard and overly brushed them for hours bc I thought it would make them white now I have an enamel of an old person.

#5

When I wipe my makeup off and see the beauty mark I tattooed with eyeliner and a needle at 16.

#6

I sucked in my belly so much I developed hourglass syndrome and still can’t fully relax my stomach muscles when standing 😩 also always feels like I can never take in a full breath.

#7

I put ice packs on my stomach thinking I could ‘freeze the fat off’. It went numb after 45 minutes and I forgot, my stomach got hard and waxy so I poured boiling water on it to thaw it out and now I have a huge ice burn scar from 5 years ago.

#8

When I was younger I used the edge of my toy house to push my front teeth together bcs my gap was actually tragic (and It worked LMAO).

#9

I stabbed myself over and over again with a sewing needle and put brown ink from a pen in the open wounds as an attempt to get freckles and I will say 14 years later they are still very much there:/

#10

I faked every eye exam because I wanted to look like the cute quirky book nerd. And get prescribed glasses. My eyes adjusted, and now I actually need the glasses.

#11

I put rubber bands around my two front teeth to try and get rid of my tooth gap 😭

#12

I always sucked in my stomach when I was little and now i have horrible flared ribs.

#13

I liked Gerard way a lot so I practiced the way he spoke out of the side of his mouth for hours and now I look like a 50 yr old chain smoker without the cigarette hanging out of my mouth every time I talk.

#14

I used to stare at the sun for like a couple seconds till my eyes hurt cause I was jealous of people wearing glasses as a kid.

#15

I use to wear a Bobby pin on my nose to make it smaller.

#16

I was constantly trying to slouch and stand leaning on one leg to appear shorter. I’ve always been tall and wanted to be short and cute like my friends. Now I’m shaped like a question mark permanently.

#17

I used to shove earrings through my ear when I wanted new piercings.

#18

Me when I used to put rhinestones on my teeth with NAIL glue.

#19

This is me wondering why my heart beats so fast all the time and remembering I used to eat so many little packets of salt as a snack.

#20

I pierced my own lip twice it was very graphic, painful and unsanitary.

#21

I would press my fingers into the sides of my face hard to try and get dimples. I now have small varicose veins there 🤣 and no dimples.

#22

Had a skin tag and cut it off now I have a hole in my skin.

#23

When I was little I was sooo insecure abt my arm hair so I poured clear nail polish all over my arms to convince my family I had a skin disease so they would have to shave my arms ?? the doctor came in w nail polish remover so fast😭

#24

I blame the YouTube videos that told me to put loom bands and earring backs on my teeth for fake braces.

#25

Me with my horrible posture and scoliosis because I thought having bad surfer girl posture looked cool as a kid.

#26

Anyone else chemical burn their skin trying to remove their freckles only for it to be trendy when we got older?

#27

I used to spend about an hour per day dragging my face across carpet flooring cause I liked how red faces looked.

#28

I used to shave my entireee face and one day my mom said “did you shave ur face??” In front of all my friends I was so embarrassed.

#29

When I look at my wrist and see the heart shaped scar because a friend in high school said she could give me a pencil “tattoo.”

#30

Used a nail file on my nose because it’s too big, scratched my eyes to try get glasses and repeatedly banged my face on my bunkbed to make my teeth fall out because people younger than me were getting adult teeth before me.

#31

I had a mole on my face and cut it off.

#32

In elementary school I wanted chin like Demi Lovato so I scratched a line on my chin for a few months until my mom saw the scab and made me stop. I still have a scar 😭

#33

I used to wake up at 3am every morning because I read it was the highest your metabolism was so I could do 150sit ups.. which did nothing because I refused to eat, so I just sucked in my tummy all the time and now I have tummy pains and my body can’t tell me when I’m hungry until I shake.

#34

I wanted braces so bad that I’d wrap rubber bands around my teeth that my friend, who actually had braces, gave me. Now my two front teeth tilt towards each other bc the bands pushed them together :/ tragic

#35

I once cut my eyelashes with nail clippers bc everyone at gymnastics told me they were really long so I interpreted that as a bad thing lmao.

Shanilou Perera

Shanilou has always loved reading and learning about the world we live in. While she enjoys fictional books and stories just as much, since childhood she was especially fascinated by encyclopaedias and strangely enough, self-help books. As a kid, she spent most of her time consuming as much knowledge as she could get her hands on and could always be found at the library. Now, she still enjoys finding out about all the amazing things that surround us in our day-to-day lives and is blessed to be able to write about them to share with the whole world as a profession.