Women Over 50 Reveal The Most Toxic Beauty Trends From Back In The Day

They say trends are cyclical, but when it comes to beauty and makeup fads, some really need to be put to bed. Supersized Flock of Seagulls-esque hair and skinny eyebrows? They can go, though Gen Z seems dead set on reviving the latter, for reasons we don’t fully understand.

And we definitely need to say goodbye to tanning beds, given what we know about skin cancer.

In the spirit of letting go of legitimately bad trends, we asked ladies over 50 to share the style and beauty trends they’re glad no longer exist (or at least seem to be on the way out.) See what they had to say below.

1. Using orange juice cans as hair rollers

“In the days before blow dryers and round brushes, we made our own beauty products! We would slather our hair with Dippity-Do and roll it on repurposed frozen orange juice cans. Have you ever slept on metal rollers? There are two possible positions: face down, or with your head hanging over the side of the bed. I would take the rollers out in the early morning hours, smooth my hair down and lie on my back trying not to move, then try to sleep.” ― Jennifer Ebelhar, a 69-year-old style coach and @theStyleEquation on TikTok

2. The oil-and-foil approach to tanning

“Oil and foil is the first beauty trend I’m thrilled is gone. If you’re too young to know, this is how we used to get a tan back in the ’60s: You’d oil up your skin and put foil nearby to reflect the sun. Yes, it’s nuts.” ― Sonia Lovett, a 71-year-old who runs the fashion blogStyle Beyond Age

“We used to slather baby oil all over our body when we were younger. In fact, when I was in college at UCLA, we had a tanning competition, where we would put a small sticker on our body as a baseline for comparison and then slather on the baby oil and