I’ve been staring at certain people, lately.
People with the good ones.
In real life or on Instagram.
I wonder how they got them. I wonder if they’re natural or if they had professional help. I’ve even messaged someone, complimenting theirs.
My name is Christine and I’m an eyebrow creeper.
Author, Lisa Scottoline, wrote in her Philadelphia newspaper humour column a while ago about the disappearing eyebrows that come with age and I found myself thereafter scrutinizing mine.
She was right, I thought, as I squinted into my vintage dressing table mirror (with corresponding bubbly glass that is actually more like looking into the surface of a pond, than a mirror). I had to turn on all the lights and get up real close but when I did, I saw that I am, indeed, a middle-aged woman with disappearing eyebrows!
The hair on my head turned from dark blonde to very brown, in my thirties. It still startles me sometimes. I have some strands of grey in my hair but my eyebrows seem to be rebelling, by not hopping aboard either the brown or grey train.
They are staying blonde. Clinging to an earlier identity, I guess: blonde and basically invisible – just like I was in high school.
Back then and not being the sort to spend a lot of time (any time) on easthetic-type activities, I always just let my eyebrows live their lives in peace. No plucking, no waxing. They just sat there, on my face, above my blue-grey eyes. They weren’t bushy or particularly straggly and even if they had been, I still don’t think I would have ever noticed them.
But now that I have a rural, home-based lifestyle and barely go outside, I find myself wondering: are my eyebrows really living their best life?
You were thinking that too, weren’t you?
I’m also not sure how this fits with my being purr-fectly content to spend most of my days in lounge pants (read: pjs), leggings, or yoga pants.
As a writer and career advisor, I work mostly from home and I don’t dye my hair or even get it cut more than a couple times a year. I’m surprised at the depth of my eyebrow envy. Given my personality and my job, I should be able to let my poor, pale, brow caterpillars rest in peace. But, increasingly, I’m doing videos and social media engagements–a world where it seems that everyone has ah-mazing things happening above their eyes.
Like Jessica Kellgreen-Fozard.
Like Tara McCallen.
These are all women doing inspiring, world-changing advocacy and disruption work. They don’t seem frivolous (as I tell myself that my eyebrow concerns are) but they do their world changing with such lovely eyebrows.
Swoony-Swoon-Swoon.
Not only that, but I feel like we’re at optimum “raising eyebrow” time in our culture at the moment and I’m missing out.
I think I might need impeachment-worthy eyebrows.
Yes, oh yes.
I am distracted in Instagram videos and on TV by the sight of a perfectly-curved arch. I wonder how people get those vintage-style eybrows. They swoop up over to a delicate point and I am frankly slightly breathless with their beauty. But, surely they must have to start with eyebrows that don’t exist?
My eyebrows just don’t bend that way!
I had my eyebrows plucked once years ago, when someone dragged me to her regular appointment. I was reluctant and it was painful and I broke out in a bumpy rash, all over my eyelids and forehead.
Ha! You want shapely eyebrows, said the universe? I see your vanity and raise you one violent case of contact dermatitis!
And that was before the current eyebrow craze.
Really, I feel strange to even talk about this. I didn’t think I was the sort to give in to this sort of appearance-focused idiocy, no, no, no. Of course, in the grand scheme of anything, it’s not important. But, eyebrows follow me everywhere these days. They’re just out there, on everyone’s face.
And then, there are the eyebrow products at the drug store.
Yikes.
I’ve always had an aversion to the cosmetics aisles (incompetence) and I think other people must be much better at drawing and colouring than I am. I’m both VERY near-sighted and slightly far-sighted both (welcome to your 50s) so doing anything in a mirror feels like a contortionist attempt I’m not qualified for. Not only that, but all the brush-y things and the pencil-y things in the world don’t seem to result in sassy eyebrows. In fact, when I’m done using them, they only remind me of those products that encourage you to spray paint your bald spot or your roots. My blond eyebrows are lying there with brown paint that somehow only goes underneath them, and doesn’t coat the individual hairs.
Yikes.
For better results, I’m told you need tattooing and/or micro-blading.
Anything that has the word “blading” in it, scares the vanity out of me. I just can’t work up the nerve, maintenance, [or the money] to go full-on eyebrow.
On Home Town, a decorating show I watch, Erin Napier has great eyebrows. She has also said (and believe me, I was paying attention because it was about eyebrows!) that “shutters” are like the eyebrows of a house.
Our house has great eyebrows.
I think this means that our house has better eyebrows than I do.
Sigh.
Christine Fader’s second book is, Just What the Doctor Ordered: The Insider’s Guide to Getting into Medical School in Canada. Find her at http://www.christinefader.com
A Vintage Life 