What I Would Tell My 25-Year-Old Self About Hair (From a Hairstylist Who Learned the Hard Way)

On a recent Beauty Lab Podcast episode, my co-host Monina and I spent an episode asking ourselves the question we had been talking about off-air: what would we tell our 25-year-old selves if we could?

Monina went deep on skin and gut health. I went deep on hair. And honestly, some of what came out surprised even me -- including a confession I have never told anyone before.

Here is everything I would go back and say.

Start Eye Cream Early. My Mom Was Right.

My mom started telling me to use eye cream when I was 13. I thought she was being dramatic. I started using it anyway -- because she was persistent -- and I am genuinely glad she won that argument.

I am in my 40s now and I have very fine lines around my eyes. No Botox, no fillers. I have not been diligent about staying out of the sun, so I cannot credit a perfect lifestyle. I credit the eye cream and the consistency.

If you are younger than 20, you do not need to stress about this yet. But if you are in your 20s and you have not started, now is a great time. The skin around your eyes is the thinnest on your face and it shows age faster than anywhere else. Starting early is about prevention, not vanity.

Wear Sunscreen Every Single Day

This one should not be surprising coming from a beauty professional, but I will be honest: I was not doing it consistently in my 20s. I was doing a lot of things that were the opposite of sunscreen.

I was outside as much as possible trying to get tan. I was using the reflective tin pan. And at one point I was using olive oil -- actual olive oil from the kitchen -- as tanning oil because we did not have baby oil in the house.

I grew up in an Italian household with olive oil in giant jugs. I used it on my face. I thought I was golden brown and gorgeous. What I was actually doing was cooking my skin.

The damage from sun exposure in your teens and 20s does not always show up until your 40s and 50s. By the time you see it, the decisions that caused it were made decades ago. Daily SPF in your 20s is not about looking different right now -- it is about what your skin looks like in 20 years.

Whatever damage has already been done: it is not too late to start. Start now.

Put Down the Tweezers and Walk Away From Your Brows

This is the one I feel most strongly about. I was constantly tweaking my brows in my 20s and 30s. I thought fuller meant less polished. I wanted them thinner and more defined.

Then hormones changed, and hair loss happens, and the brows I spent years thinning out just... did not come back the same way. Now I have to fill them in every single day because there is not much left.

If you have full brows right now, please appreciate them. They are not a problem to fix. They are a feature to protect.

And along those same lines -- if you do not know about lash serums yet, get acquainted. I wish I had started using one earlier, before the natural thinning that comes with hormonal changes. Maintaining and supporting what you have is so much easier than trying to restore what you have already lost.

Stop Abusing Your Eyelashes

The things I did to my eyelashes in my 20s. The eyelash curlers. The mascara left on for days. The heated curlers that made an audible crunch when I used them on mascara-coated lashes.

That crunch is the sound of damage. I can still hear it.

Mascara that dries on the lash makes the lash brittle. Using an eyelash curler on brittle, mascara-coated lashes breaks them. Leaving mascara on for multiple days without washing it off thoroughly is a recipe for lash loss over time.

Now my lashes are so short that the eyelash curler is basically pointless. I am not saying the two are entirely connected -- hormones and age play a role too. But I was not doing myself any favors.

Wash your mascara off thoroughly every night. Be gentle with your lashes. Treat them like something worth keeping, because you might not always have them.

Stop Complaining That Your Hair Is Too Thick

This one is embarrassing to admit but here it is: I spent years asking every hairstylist to thin my hair out. I would say "use the razor, keep going, more thinning." I had so much hair and I thought it was a problem to solve.

I would give anything to have that hair back now.

Hair changes with age, with hormones, with health, with stress. The thickness that felt like too much in your 20s might feel like a gift by your 40s. If you have full, thick hair right now, please stop complaining about it and start taking care of it.

Your Hair Challenges Are Not Flaws -- They Are Your Expertise

Every feature I spent years fighting -- the thickness, the curl, the widow's peak I apparently was tweezed into softening while Monina was trying to draw one on -- every single one of those things shaped how I understand hair.

The clients in my chair who hate their hair have the exact things I can relate to. The women who come in frustrated that nothing works, I know exactly what they mean because I lived it. Everything you dislike about your hair right now is something you will either learn to appreciate, learn to work with, or use to understand someone else someday.

Stop fighting your hair. Start learning it.

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