The Eyebrows Have It

I hated my eyebrows when I was a teenager.
To me, they looked like wooly worms run wild above my eyes. Most fair skinned, light-haired girls I knew also had nice light brows. Some even knew how to tweeze them (Emily: if you ever run across this post, note that I said "tweeze" not "pluck" because, as you always chided me, "You tweeze your brows; you pluck a chicken.) into these amazing--and looking back on it rather Geisha-esque--mini arches.

My brows now aren't wormish at all so I doubt they really were that dark and thick as a teen. But they aren't invisible either. Going gray a bit and definitely thinner but they are still a real presence on my face and I love them. My mother had no brows or lashes. She said she had singed them off lighting a cigar one time but that sounds apocryphal--although I know she did have quite a wild streak (which I wish I had inherited). She would try to pencil brows in but that really doesn't work if you've got no hairs to work with, so she achieved more of a Bozo effect. I think she was happy when she got old enough to not feel she had to work that hard at makeup anymore.

After a solid four decades of just trying to ignore what I saw as Giant Schnauzer brows, I now tend to their grooming lovingly. Following the mantra of such brow queens as Anastasia, I try to tweeze just the rowdy hairs that fall outside the imagined main arches. But I don't really bother to try to get an arch anyway--my left eyebrow is naturally just much straighter across and I'm ok with that. Isn't that a dandy perk of age, when at least with one or two things about our faces and bodies, we actually come to accept asymmetry? And I know they tell you to only tweeze below the brow, not above, but, sorry, I think some of my brow hairs are trying to make a sprint up to fill in the thinning of my hairline. If I thought it might work, I'd look the other way and let them head for the border but I don't think that'll happen, so out they come.

And the last step of my makeup routine every day is brush-on brow gel. I used to use clear but since my hair is darker now (shhh, yes I dye it.) and my brows are grayer, I'm using a tint. Brow gel, if you've never used it, brushes on like mascara and it's the only stuff I can get to look natural: pencils and liquids befuddle me because they get applied to the skin around the hairs and that's not what I want. My current love is from Armani and is listed as "limited edition." They stop making it and I'm doomed.

Wow, a whole post about something I like about my appearance. I must have stayed out in the shade too long.