Skinny eyebrows. Blue eyeshadow. Lip liner much darker than the lip color.
What the hell were we thinking?
Let’s take a walk down memory lane and thank the universe that we haven’t brought some of these absolutely regrettable trends back, shall we?
And yeah, there’s a lot of Paris Hilton here. I mean, no one defined 2000s style like she did.
The nudest lips in the world.
The key to those ever-sought after nude lips was your foundation. No, really! We put our foundation or concealer over our lips and then put gloss on top. That was the only way to get the ultimate nude lip.
So much self tanner.
Believe it or not, it was super cool to look borderline orange in the 2000s. Snooki was basically on-trend when she came onto the scene looking like a fluorescent, burned orange.
I’m glad we live in a world where this is so not acceptable anymore. I mean…look at that tan. It’s offensive, tbh.
Lip gloss thicker than my thighs.
If your lip gloss wasn’t slathered on and shiny as hell, you were not wearing enough. You had to whip out that Lip Smackers and keep applying until your lips could stick together.
Those frickin’ bangs.
If you were going to be someone, you had to have those Hilary Duff bangs. They were wispy, piece-y, and could be converted into very long front bangs if the mood struck. But they had to be parted in the middle.
French tips.
You were no one if you didn’t have french tips on your nails. Cher from Clueless had them, Elle Woods had them — everyone had them. They were the IT nail.
Blue eyeshadow.
Blue eyeshadow was hot af in the 2000s, especially if it came from one of those rollerball eyeshadow applicators.
The first eyeshadow I ever bought was the bright blue “Electric Eel” from MAC, true story.
This haircut.
Oh, this was the hot girl haircut to have. Too short for a bob but way too long for a pixie, that chin-length, choppy look had its moment in the sun. And we should never bring it back.
Ombré lips.
This one lasted way longer than I thought it would. The darker lip liner blended into the lighter lip color was especially 2000s when combined with the color brown — and lip gloss, of course. (Peep the iconic middle-part bangs.)
This is a two-for-one special.
One the left, we have the popular “straight, curly, crimped” hairstyle on Britney.
On the right, we have the “dark lowlights” trend on Christina. Sorry, she was going by XTina at that time.
Ponytail bumps.
Your ponytail was not complete if it didn’t have a bump-it in it. What’s a bump-it, you ask? It’s a thing we stuck to our heads and backcombed our hair onto to keep it EXTRA high.
Butterfly clips.
If you didn’t have at least five of these in your hair, your hair was not ready to be seen by other people. Did they hurt? Yes. Did we still wear them anyway? Yes.
Top and bottom liner.
If you even hoped to look edgy (read: like Avril Lavigne or Taylor Momsen), you had to have thick, black liner on your eyelid and under your eyes. And you had to load up on mascara, too.
The pompadour.
Sorry, but you were legally required to style your bangs like this if you had them. They made mini bump-its for your bangs, but I usually just backcombed mine and then held them down with bobby pins and a lot of hairspray.
Those. Brows.
With all due respect, Christina, those brows? Tragic. So very tragic. We plucked them until they were barely there, and then we drew in thin lines that we did not blend. RIP super-thin eyebrows.
Chunky, mixed highlights.
It’s okay, Kelly. We all went through a phase where we thought these chunky highlights were the peak of beauty. It wasn’t until much, much later that we all realized that we literally embraced striped hair. Ahhh!
