6 Makeup Trends That Need to Die

We can only blame the runways for the return of this fad. It seems that every few years, someone decides that it’s time to overdose on mascara in an act of rebellion. We admit that sometimes it’s hard not to go mascara crazy when you’ve got that wand in hand, but be gentle! Long, clumpy lashes can make your eyes appear smaller or even alter the shape of your eyes altogether.

Thanks to the ongoing innovation of mascara manufacturers, layering on 4 coats of mascara to get thicker lashes can (and should) be a thing of the past.

Rebounding from last year’s scary Kylie Lip Challenge, people are looking for affordable ways to get fuller lips without breaking their capillaries. The problem is that people tend to underestimate how easy it is to mess up the proportions of the top and bottom lips. You risk looking a bit clownish if you overdraw your top lips and they begin to rival the size and shape of the bottom.

If you want to create plush lips without breaking the bank, try dabbing a slightly lighter shade of lipstick to the center of your lips for a fuller pucker.

We honestly appreciate attempts to modernize the frosted lipstick like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want” lipstick collaboration with MAC late last year. While Mariah will slay every lipstick color in the spectrum, we left this formula in the 90s for a reason. This lipstick settles into lip lines and can make you appear frost-bitten. With the explosion of matte lipsticks that turns heads without the glare, why buy into the frosted candy look of yesteryear that can leave us looking washed out?

Opt for light coral and pink lipsticks that bring out your natural lip color, leaving you looking youthful and refreshed.

Rooted in drag makeup and touted by Tyra Banks on her show in ’09, baking has broken into the mainstream.

Baking relies on packing light-colored powder onto areas of your face normally reserved for highlighting. While you complete the rest of your face, you just let it sit for about 10 minutes (to “bake”) before dusting it all away. It’s supposed to set your makeup and work as a highlighter without the shimmer, but adding this extra layer to your makeup routine can leave your skin feeling dry and heavy.

This technique photographs amazingly well, but even Kim K reserves it for the red carpet.

Another blast from the past: the extreme brow highlight. Long endorsed by professionals, this trick, when done right, will lift your eyes and make you appear younger. But some people are going in too liberally and sticking some extra bold and bright shimmer under their entire brow. Brow highlighting has gotten more conservative over the years, but a spike in extreme highlighting coinciding with the strobing technique has set us back again.

Try a natural look by highlighting with a concealer that’s slightly lighter than your skin tone. For some more glam, put away that stark silver glitter and use a warmer toned highlighter with some subtle shimmer.

Remember the tongue-in-cheek clown contouring tag on Instagram? The Internet went nuts and clown contouring soon became an actual makeup technique. It showcased the magic of the Beauty Blender, but it seems like people are starting to forget that last crucial step: blending!

Despite that valiant effort to sculpt the perfect cheekbones, heavy contouring just doesn’t make sense when our daily schedules don’t involve movie premiers and fashion shows. This trick works well for celebrities who are under the glare of the spotlight but try as we might, we aren’t them. A heavily applied contour helps when shooting photographs, but it has no place when you’re just hitting up your local grocery store.