A woman born without eyebrows has been permanently disfigured after an attempt to make her face appear “more normal.”
For her entire life, Jami Ledbetter has drawn on her eyebrows due to a rare condition that prevented the hairs from growing naturally.
She was thrilled when her daughters told her about a process known as microblading that involves tatooing eyebrows with a thin needle or blade.
Ledbetter’s daughters purchased a $250 microblading session on Groupon, but things did not go as planned.
“I would never wish this on my worst enemy,” the 42-year-old mother said in an interview with Fox 4 News in Kansas City. “What it’s done to my self-confidence, it’s been hard.”
“I was devastated,” Ledbetter said. “I was even dating a guy, and he stopped dating me at that point.”
The botched job was performed by a woman who claims she was certified in the beauty technique.
Embarrassed and depressed, Ledbetter went to another beautician who said the mistake could be camouflaged. Six weeks later her eyebrows appeared worse than ever.
Finally Ledbetter was referred to Kara Gutierrez, a professionally licensed and insured tattoo artist.
“It took everything in me to hold back tears because this is the worse I’ve ever seen,” Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez has been in the beauty industry since 2011 and owned her own business since 2016.
She removed Ledbetter’s poorly constructed eyebrows with Li-ft, apigment lightening solution that is injected into the bad ink. The process takes multiple sessions separated by two months at a time.
“It’s very unpredictable to how much you can remove, but it works.” Gutierrez explained.
Gutierrez revealed that microblading isn’t regulated like the tattoo industry in Missouri. “Nobody’s governing this,” she said. “No one is saying, ‘This is the right way. This is the wrong way.’”
“This is something that is permanent on your face,” Gutierrez said. “You have to make sure your artist knows what they’re doing.”
She cautioned anyone who is considering a microblading procedure. “A certification is just a fancy piece of paper saying [someone] learned how to do this,” she added. “It doesn’t necessarily mean [they’re] an expert. “Don’t just look into the person that’s doing it. Look into their instructor.”
The woman responsible for Ledbetter’s disfigurement is currently out of business. Ledbetter still has two to three more sessions with Gutierrez to completely remove the bad brows at a total cost of at least $1,000.