Eyebrows are very important, you guys. But oh man, I’ve had some sad brow game in my lifetime.
When I was a teenager, and still trying to figure out my identity (AKA copy what the other girls at school were doing while also reading the confused, mixed messages dutifully delivered by Cosmo magazine), I had thin, arched eyebrows that I penciled over in a hue 12 shades darker than my natural hair color.
I also wore brown lipstick. (Let’s all take a moment to fully appreciate the mental image conjured by this). Give me a break. It was 1997, a time when even movie stars would fashionably overtweeze and sometimes even shave off their brows to achieve that PERFECT pencil-thin rainbow arch.
But clearly, I wasn’t a movie star. And instead of an arch, my eyebrows looked more like black colored zig-zag shapes drawn over my eyes. And I looked like a friggin’ hoochie.
The worst is when I would sweat during gym class and go back to the locker rooms with brown streams of liquid dripping from the top of my forehead.
One time, I decided to try one of those electric brow shavers. I can still hear the buzz of the hair leaving my face. Word of advice, peeps: DON’T TRY TO USE AN ELECTRIC ANYTHING. YOU WILL TAKE YOUR EYEBROWS OFF, WITHOUT A DOUBT.
And by the way, it’s totally possible to pluck your eyebrows so much that they stop growing back. If you damage the follicle enough, you’re done. To this day, I have a naked patch in the middle of my right eyebrow that I’m forced to draw in with a pencil. I might as well have been using garden shears on my face when I was a teen. What a mess.
I’m happy to report that nowadays my brow game is totally on-point, thanks in part to an angled blending brush, eyebrow powder and a professional who shapes them for me.
