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Influencer hospitalized after trying DIY beauty hack off of TikTok: 'My face was unrecognizable'

A 21-year-old reality star from Australia is warning fans against trying out DIY beauty hacks from TikTok after she attempted to give herself an acupuncture facial and now is dealing with deep, severe scarring.

TikTok hosts a plethora of beauty hacks, including using cinnamon oil to plump lips, holding a ponytail without a hair tie and taping a potato to your face to soothe a cystic pimple. But for some beauty treatments, it’s much safer to shell out a few extra bucks and go to a professional.

That seemed to be the case with Tilly Whitfield, a current contestant on Australia’s Big Brother. In a viral Instagram post, the reality star finally addressed fans’ questions about why she often wore a blue clay mask on the show.

“For those asking why I have my blue clay face mask on continuously throughout the show this is what my face looked like a week prior to entering the house hence why I always have makeup on and my skin is always covered,” Whitfield wrote. “This is the result of attempting to remove scarring I inflicted on myself trying to replicate an at-home beauty procedure I saw on a TikTok video.”

Whitfield claimed that she ended up going to the hospital with “temporary loss of vision” in her left eye, due to swelling. Her face, for weeks afterward, was “somewhat unrecognizable.”

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“Please please don’t try any ‘DIY’ or ‘at-home’ beauty procedures,” she warned. “This is deep below surface-level scarring and dark pigmentation.”

Whitfield didn’t reference a specific TikTok, nor did she give many details about which hack she was trying to replicate. However, she did deny in the post’s comments that her scarring was related to a chemical peel. With the rise in TikTok’s obsession with skincare, there have been horror stories of people reacting poorly to chemical peels — particularly one from The Ordinary.

Instead, Whitfield updated the Instagram caption, to claim the damage was related to some sort of acupuncture attempt.