3 Huge Lash Mistakes This Specialist Sees All The Time

Hair growth is an incredibly complex topic, as the cycle of loss and growth can be influenced by many factors. It becomes even more complicated when you start to get to hyper-localized areas of hair growth, such as the brows and lashes.

But that's exactly what today's episode of Clean Beauty School is all about. In the episode I chat with esthetician and brow and lash specialist Jasmine Imani, founder of her namesake salon Jasmine Imani Beauty. Her aesthetic is fairly nonfussy and minimal ("I'm all about low-key maintenance, like how can I wake up, not do much, still look wonderful?" she says), but don't let that fool you into thinking she's not diligent about her beauty rituals. 

"Your lash basics are daily exfoliation and hydration," she says. If this sounds like new info, don't worry, I, too, have not been doing this. 

When she talks about exfoliating the lashes, she's certainly not advocating using something like a scrub in the area. Instead, "you just want to take a dry spoolie and brush through your lashes every day," she says. "I don't think people understand that your lashes are there to collect dust and debris from the day. The hair is there to keep things out of your eyes. So at the end of the night, it is to give them a little brush."

This may be a tough pill to swallow, but Imani says it's time to put down the lash curler. 

"I think this needs to be spread far and wide: Your lash curler hates you and is killing your lashes," she says. "They're stressing out your lash line and pulling out lashes whether you realize it or not."

The last lash red flag is waterproof mascara. "In order for waterproof mascara to stick on your lashes, it dehydrates and strips the hair," she says. "That's why they won't move and are hard to get off. The harder a mascara is to get off, the worse it probably is for your hair." 

Not only is this stripping of the hair fiber, but this can lead to breakage: "In the process, it's also breaking off your lashes and chipping them at the tips," she says, noting that this will lead to a repeated cycle of use. "People will then keep using this type of mascara because they feel they have no lashes [and need a product that will build]. Eventually, you find yourself with very thin lashes." 

Don't worry, you can still use regular mascara—and in fact, Imani notes that nowadays clean mascaras are quite spectacular.