The phrase “you get what you pay for” is usually true in regards to beauty trends—even newer ones.
If you go to a high-end hair salon, you expect that the hairdresser isn’t using cheap or unsafe hairdryers. When you go to an expensive tattoo shop, you’re paying for an experienced tattoo artist who knows what they’re doing.
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The same should be true for a beauty trend like microblading.
I say should because microblading is unregulated by law, meaning that a lot of people don’t necessarily get what they pay for.
In case you weren’t aware, microblading is a semi-permanent form of eyebrow tattoo.
It may seem insane to some, but for those who have lighter eyebrow hair or have trouble growing out their brows altogether, microblading is an expensive-yet-accessible beauty treatment that has the ability to change how one’s entire face is framed.
One 42-year-old mom from Kansas City, Missouri was excited after receiving a Groupon certificate for a microblading session.
Jami Ledbetter is one of thousands of people in the country who was born without eyebrows, which is why she was ecstatic to find that she had several microblading specialists in her area.
Unfortunately, things went down hill from there.
She used the Groupon certificate to book a microblading session with a woman whom she thought was a professional, but after the session was finished, she was horrified at the results.
“I would never wish this on my worst enemy.”
“What it’s done to my self-confidence, it’s been hard,” she explained to Fox 4KC . “I was even dating a guy, and he stopped dating me at that point.”
Her love life wasn’t the only thing that was affected.
Ledbetter explains that after the session, she was too embarrassed to leave her house, even to go to work or go shopping.
She even went to a second specialist to try and fix her brows, which ended up making things worse.
“It was pretty painful,” she explains. “I tried to have a good attitude, but it burned a lot. It kind of felt bruised.”
Ledbetter was then referred to licensed tattoo artist Kara Gutierrez, who often performs tattoo removal.
“It took everything in me to hold back tears because this is the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Ledbetter is now receiving a treatment called Li-ft to “help lift the pigment out of [her] brows.”
Li-ft isn’t a casual procedure either.
The process involves tattooing the brows with the Li-ft and waiting for them to scab, which takes the pigment out.
“It’s very unpredictable to how much you can remove, but it works,” the tattoo artist explained.
The process can only be performed in 8-week intervals, which means that in-between sessions, Ledbetter will have to put up with the after-effects of the botched microblading sessions from before.
Ledbetter is now trying to spread awareness around the dangers of un-licensed microbladers.
“If I would have known it was going to turn out like this, I probably would’ve never done it at all,” she explains. She will have to pay upwards of $1000 dollars total for her removal sessions.
