The Right Way to Hit Pause on Your Beauty Treatments
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I started getting frequent gel manicures last year; the long-lasting shine and weeks of chip-free perfection had me hooked. Then, at the urging of a friend who is a lash addict (“It will make your whole face look wide awake,” she said), I finally got a set of “natural” lash extensions and was immediately sold—and had to schedule an appointment for a three-week fill before even leaving the salon. Plus: I already cover my grays every few months and get twice-yearly keratin smoothing treatments. I also go in for sporadic brow grooming and swimsuit waxes, but those feel like things I can dip in and out of—or DIY without too many repercussions.
Put it all together, and both my calendar and my credit card bills are groaning.
So, first I decided to take a break from the gel manicures. I had the gel removed and asked that they just do the basic manicure but leave my nails bare—thinking I’d paint them at home later. But what lay beneath was an unwelcome mess. My nails were weak, splitting, and jagged. Then, I peered at my lashes in the mirror, trying to see if my natural fringe underneath the extensions was also suffering in silence. If I stopped the fill appointments and allowed the extensions to drop off, would I end up with even sparser lashes than I’d started with? Once you know what it’s like to wake up looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, can you ever go back?
It’s a topic I talk about a lot with friends who do similar beauty treatments: Is it worth trying out certain indulgences if it means you might get hooked, or that you could be incurring irreparable damage and forced to stay the course to conceal it? Carrie, a consultant in Portland, Oregon, had a great name for the whole concept: the merry-go-round. “For me, doing things like lash extensions, gel manicures, and even Botox feels like a merry-go-round that starts spinning faster and faster. At first, you’re like, Oh, I’m doing this fun ride! And then you’re like, Ooh, I’m kind of dizzy and nauseous. I want to get off. But you can’t, because it’s spinning too fast now. And the things that are making you nauseous, in this analogy, are the cost, the time, and in some cases, damage.”
Carrie is trying to get off the lash and gel nail trains: “It’s hard, though—because once I started doing the lashes, it felt like I had a full face of makeup on ALL the time, and you get used to seeing your face that way. The same thing goes for Botox, too; I did it a few times and loved the results … but it’s a lot of upkeep every few months. And with my nails, it’s so tricky, because when they remove the gel, my nails are so flimsy that they bend and break. So I often just cave and have the gel put back on, but then my nails aren’t getting stronger underneath … so it’s like kicking the can down the road.”
With some treatments, there’s also the issue of sunk costs, such as a hefty initial outlay to start the process. Lash extensions, for example, cost more for a brand-new set than just a fill, and some hair treatments are more expensive on “virgin” hair.
If you’ve become entangled in beauty routines and are hoping to escape from a few of them, I’ve done some research.
How to Wean Yourself From Keratin Treatments
For people who do keratin treatments once a year (typically in summer) to tamp down on frizz, there’s not much of an ease-off process—the treatment washes out gradually over time, says Nunzio Saviano, owner of his namesake salon in New York City. But for folks who do them more frequently, have been doing them back-to-back for years, or have chosen treatments that can loosen curl more than others (including those that may contain formaldehyde), the effects can be much harder to shake off. You may need to cut off some of the treated hair to get back to your natural texture.
“If someone has been doing keratin only once a year, the natural hair texture will come back in a relatively short time,” Saviano says. But for clients who’ve done treatments three or four times a year for several years, it takes longer. He adds: “It’s important to cut as much off as possible to refresh the hair.” To speed along the process, do exactly what they told you not to do to extend the life of your keratin treatment, such as wash with a harsher shampoo. Saviano suggests using clarifying shampoos to help detox the hair shaft, and avoiding conditioners with a protein base (for example, any containing keratin or amino acids), as these can prolong the effects of the keratin treatment.
How to Stop Lash Extensions
When it comes to lash extensions, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to wear them month after month, says Andra Ciulei, artistic director at Courtney Akai Lash Boutique, who herself has been wearing extensions back-to-back for almost 15 years. The key, of course, is that the extensions be done well and are tailored to your specific lashes—not thicker or longer than they can bear. “The stress caused by the lashes that are too long and too thick can make your natural lashes fall out prematurely, and when that happens over and over again for many years, permanent damage can happen,” Ciulei says. “Think over-plucked eyebrows that sometimes grow back, and other times do not.” To make sure you’re getting lashes that are right for you, Ciulei stresses that your lash artist should be the one to decide what will work for you, as opposed to your just picking from a lookbook.
If you decide you don’t want to keep up with the fills, it’s fine to just let the fauxs fall out naturally, she says. “If they were done well—i.e., no more than 2 or 3 millimeters longer than your natural lashes—as they fall out, extensions should blend with the natural lashes and not cause visible gaps. If a much longer extension was used, it would create visible gaps and be quite noticeable as they shed, in which case you might want to have them removed all at once.” Another way to ease back into natural lash life and mask any lash fallout: “Put a good black liner on the upper lid.” You can also use a lash serum (RX or OTC) while you’re still using extensions, to help your lashes get a running start for when you do take a pause from extensions.
How to Quit Gel Manicures
Once you go gel … it’s hard to go back. The shine! The durability! The higher cost, however, may be a reason to intersperse gel with regular manicures. But if your gel isn’t done carefully, it’s not always that easy. “It’s all about how it the gel is applied and how it’s removed,” says Evelyn Lim, chief educator at Paintbox nail studio in New York City. To start, it shouldn’t be hard to remove properly applied gel manicures, starting with a quick filing-off of the “shine” layer (a.k.a. the top coat) and then soaking each nail in pure acetone for at least 10 to 15 minutes. “Gentle removals do take some time,” says Lim, so if you notice that your nail tech has you soak for what feels like only a hot second, speak up. As for application, each brand has its own guidelines for the curing time of the base coat—“the critical step,” says Lim—and if it’s overcured, it can be extra tricky to remove, requiring excess scraping and filing, which can remove layers of your actual nail.
While the average person is hardly going to know how long things should be curing and how much filing is normal, this is why doing your best to find a nail technician you trust—someone you’re comfortable asking questions—is important. With a regular manicure, even one without polish, you can prioritize nail health for a few weeks or months before deciding on your next move.
How to Taper Off Injections
Even if you love the smoothing look of Botox, you might not adore how often you have to have it redone—for most people, it’s every few months. Thankfully, with something like neuromodulators, you don’t need an official exit strategy—you just don’t go back for more. Your lines and movement will slowly reappear.
Fillers are a bit different, though. They last longer, to be sure (some fade in just a few months, others take a few years to fully dissolve), and while you could simply let the effect wane, some dermatologists recommend against just ghosting your injector. Removing filler is not going to cause your face to deflate overnight like a balloon, nor will lips without filler suddenly look limp (unless they been so dramatically over-injected as to stretch the tissues to extremes), but “expecting it to just fully fade away on its own is not practical, because it depends on several factors, including the type of filler used, how much was used, how it was injected, where it was injected,” says Shereene Idriss, a board-certified dermatologist and founder of Idriss Dermatology in New York City.
This is especially true if you’ve been doing injections for a while—you may need to make some careful calibration and step down slowly to get an end result that’s more sustainable and to your liking. Have your doctor talk you through the options, and possibly dissolve the filler, Idriss says.
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