Teenage girls have no qualms with spending a little extra time tending to their looks. It’s not uncommon for them to spend countless hours in front of the mirror, styling their hair and experimenting with new makeup. Nowadays, there are so many hair styling tools and makeup products that it takes a lot of time to narrow down what works and what doesn’t work. Teens love to try on new looks, and while the majority of those looks are safe, such as a change in eye shadow, a tinted bronzer or a new shade of lipstick, there are some products that need to be tested out properly, or simply avoided.
Sixteen-year-old Australian Tylah Durie is no different than any other teenager. One day, she was on a mission to tint her eyebrows and lashes. After making a hair dye purchase at the local drug store, Durie headed home to complete her experiment. Having used hair dye in the past, she wasn’t too nervous about using it on her brows and lashes. Unfortunately, she didn’t do her research on the ingredients that were in the products that she would be using so closely to her eyes. This particular dye had p-Phenylenediamine (often simply known as PPD), which is a chemical that is often used instead of henna or other coloring agents.
It is highly recommended that you do a patch test to find out if you are allergic to the chemical, however; Durie failed to take that extra step, which made her have to learn the hard way that her body couldn’t tolerate it.
She woke up the next day looking like this…
Certainly not the look she was going for. She was quite alarmed to see puffy eyes and brows and lids that could hardly open.
“I woke up almost blind because of the reaction, my eyes had blown up like huge balloons, I was crying and screaming. It was like having beach sand thrown in your eyeballs and not being able to get it out, then a stinging like razor blades on my eyebrows,” she said.
She learned that she had chemical burns from the dye which made it impossible to see due to the horrific swelling of her eyes. She is now warning all of her friends on social media how important it is to conduct a test before using any products purchased at the drug store. Luckily, Durie was cured with some prescription ointment and she was able to look like her normal self again.
“I was terrified of losing my eyesight at such a young age. An optometrist the next day told me how lucky I was not to have gone blind.”
Hopefully her story will serve as a warning to others who set out to experiment with these products.
Commenters on her post agreed that she was so pretty before the experiment-gone-wrong but it always helps to read instructions first…
“She’s a beautiful girl and doesn’t need make up.”
“Read the directions, don’t use this product on your eyelashes of eyebrows.”
