See, I feel like we have this understanding, you and I. We can share things. We can tell each other our geeky dreams, our goofy nightmares, and our girly homicidal urgings. Right?
Right?
So, here's the thing: I have these eyebrows. And they're, well, opinionated. They like to be seen. They're also stubborn and pretty kinky, but maybe I shouldn't get into that just yet. Besides, the main problem is the astonishing rate at which my opinionated eyebrows reproduce.
At least, I'm assuming they reproduce. You know, in some bizarre mitosis manner, where when one is plucked out two more spring up to take their fallen comrade's place. Then they scream "death to Jen's forehead!!" in their scritchy little voices and march all night towards ear and nose country.
What, you think I'm exaggerating? Well, maybe just a little. About the scritchy voices. The fact remains, however, that I'm the only person I know whose eyebrows get a 5 o'clock shadow. Seriously! And I don't shave them! I pluck! Let's throw another exclamation mark in here!
So back in my twenties, I declared war. And, ok, I may have gotten a little overzealous. I may have spent too much time watching YouTube makeup tutorials by pretty girls who draw their eyebrows in. I may have thought I could "pull this look off."
I'll spare you the suspense: I can't.
In fact, I spent that phase looking both perpetually surprised and angry. Not a good combo. John looks back on photos of that time and calls it my "witchy-face stage." Also not good.
You'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but occasionally I still fall prey to the just-one-more-to-even-it-up madness. Then I survey the damage and vow that this time I'm growing out some perfect Jennifer Connelly eyebrows.
Is it wrong that I still base by beauty ideal on Sarah from Labyrinth? 'Cuz if so, then I don't wanna be right.About a week or two later I remember: I look nothing like Jennifer Connelly. (Dang it.)
Not to mention her brow hairs don't curl around to form perfect circles. Yep, that's right: I have Shirley Temples. So in addition to plucking twice a day, I also have to trim my eyebrows. (That, or find the world's smallest flat iron.)
Enough griping, though. That solves nothing.
Instead, let's focus on who to blame.
Instead, let's focus on who to blame.
Personally, I'm gonna have to go with my Jewish roots. My big, thick, dark Jewish roots. Sure, ok, I don't need mascara. But at what price, people? AT WHAT PRICE? (And don't get me started on shaving my legs: I'm basically an ambulatory cactus by the time I towel off.)
Well, I suppose I could wave the white flag. Give up. Go "au natural."
Naaah.
Ok, girls, give: am I the only one with these issues? If not, then tell me your best eyebrow story in the comments; this misery would looove some company.
I have one word for you: threading
ReplyDeleteyou're welcome.
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ReplyDeleteJust found your blog last week!
ReplyDeleteI have eyebrows that not only must be trimmed because they grow to 6 inches long, they grow down my eyelids almost to my lashes. Try waxing your eyelids. its an unbelievable exercise in masochism.
I have Norwegian bushy eyebrows, but I can't pluck them, or I risk unevenness because I have a scar running right along the middle of one from where I cut my head open on a coffee table when I was young.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for being honest about your eyebrow issues. I, too, suffer from eyebrow dilemmas, but I think it is just that I mess way too much with them. I pluck them with tweezers at home, and with my fingernails during work. Gross, huh?! I think I have an eyebrow specific version of trichotillomania.
ReplyDeleteI guess I should feel especially blessed then... I never had problems with my eye brows until just this year (at almost 40). And then it's just a stray hair occasionally. When a friend was waxing her eyebrows several years ago, my daughter (then about 14) asked if said friend would do hers also. The friend looks at my daughter and says "Umm no. You have perfect eye brows, like your mother." After hearing Jen's story, that comment makes me feel even better...
ReplyDeleteAnd-- umm looking like Sarah when we were that age, was ok. Now? Eh, maybe not as "ok". But if it means getting to play with the monsters and David Bowie dressed like that... Yeah, I could go there. ;)
I totally sympathize, and here's the rub: IT ALL HURTS!!! Tweezing, trimming, most of all waxing, especially waxing! Who doesn't want to slather their brow with napalm and immediately rip it off? Sometimes being a girl is rather inconvenient, so I just let the professionals deal with it. By that I mean bartenders, I gotta drown my sorrows somehow!
ReplyDeleteYou're not alone Jen, my eyebrows give me no end of problems. I swear, a day after I wax and I'm already looking for the tweezers, it's just not fair.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should all rebel, go with the grandpa munster look....at least we wouldn't be alone. :p
~Amber
I have caterpillars marching across my forehead. No lie, yesterday my 6-year old boy said, "Mommy, your eyebrows are really bushy." Thanks, darling.
ReplyDeleteBarefoot in the Kitchen
In college, I got my brows waxed for the first time ever over a long weekend while staying with family. I came back to school in time for a Sunday-night basketball game and got picked to participate in the halftime activities because the cheerleaders (some of my friends) didn't recognize me. I'd thought my defining feature was my eyes but no, it was my eyebrow. Singular.
ReplyDeleteAnd now, when I get stressed, I pull out my left eyebrow hairs. It's generally not noticeable, because they're both still super thick and fuzzy, but I've also made a hole in lefty. Or, like now, the left brow is much shorter than the right.
Cool, I may be the first commenter. Does that mean I have to come up with something totally profound or I am never allowed to be first again?!
ReplyDeleteSeriously though Jen, I have problems shaping my eyebrows too, I just go for waxing. You can get a really good brow kit from Sephora though that gives you a template to shape them perfectly for your face. Hope that helps some. You never have to feel alone with beauty worries, we all have them.
I have a similar problem... But only with one eyebrow, which is asymmetrical and frustrating. My right brow looks fine (with some tweezing maintenance) but the left... each hair is much more curled than the other, which makes my eyebrow look funny. I've often wished for a tiny straitening iron myself.
ReplyDeleteMy eyebrow hairs grow in two different directions. I have some that point up and some that point down. I've been told by different women who have waxed my brows that my brows are strange. Grooming my brows with a small brush dipped in clear mascara or some hair spray is supposed to help the catastrophe on my forehead.
ReplyDeleteImbrace your inner MENTAT
ReplyDeleteI used to make my brothers cringe in shame cause I had more chest hair than they did. LOL.
I thought it was just me!
ReplyDeleteI broke down around the age of 25 and had them waxed. Honestly it wasn't too bad but I think they are a bit too thin toward the temple.
So then I think I should grow them out a bit.
But two things happen whenever I get this stupid idea.
1. I get ONE unruly little bugger that is the blackest, thickest hair to ever be seen. And it grows in right in the middle of my brow...only it's about 1/8" below my actual brow.
Now that doesn't sound like a far distance. But when you have large-ish eye lids it looks like a mole gone bad.
And of course when I attempt to pluck the little mole/hair of death it hangs on for dear life. As if it's rooted directly into the part of my brain that triggers tears and red irritation marks.
UGH!
2. I always end up with at least one hair that is continually missed each time I pluck or trim. By the time I find it it is as long as my eyebrows are wide! I swear that one time I found one so long I could have donated it to Locks-of-Love!
I still haven't found the perfect solution, so I go back and forth between brow hair that is too short or too long. As long as I can keep the mole looking ones at bay I think they will let me keep my job.
Uh-oh...that's giving me an idea.
:)
You made me laugh today!:-)
ReplyDeleteWell, I have blonde eyebrows, very ordinary, and I only pluck a few strays on the bridge of my nose, so I'm not qualified to help you. I did wonder what would happen if you try using mousse on your brows. Would it help or just make them stiff?
I do identify with wanting different brows though. I would like mine to look like Elizabeth Mitchell's, but I would have to have a professional do it and I hear it hurts. The one time I got mine professionally waxed I cried it hurt so much (Yeah, I'm a baby). This was on a Monday. The strip she ripped turned red and bumpy. The bumps lasted until Wednesday and the redness until Friday. I gave up.
I have the opposite eyebrow problem. In high school, during a dress rehearsal for Hello Dolly, I finished my stage makeup and walked out of the dressing room to be confronted (loudly) by a costume mom who announced, "WHERE are your eyebrows???"
ReplyDeleteI had no idea what to do! I'd basically spent my life ignoring my invisible eyebrows... so I turned to my best friend, who has an eyebrow obsession. I swear, if someone punched her in the face, she'd panic about mussed eyebrows before she'd notice a deviated septum.
My dear eyebrow-centric friend pencilled them in for me. I still can't handle looking at those cast photos... I hate how prominent my eyebrows are!
I have dreadful eyebrows, and facial hair. I'm olive toned (which is a weird term because I'm not green, or wrinkly yet) and have dark hair on my face. I pluck, I wax, I even tried threading. Don't get me started on threading. Whoever told me it was painless needs to have their nose hairs pulled out by pliers.
ReplyDeleteI have struggled with my eyebrows since I was a pre-teen. When I was 10 my brother hit me, by accident, with the back of a hammer (the part that pulls the nails out whatever that end is called)and got me right in the eyebrow. So I have a huge gap in the hairs on my left eyebrow. Remember when it first became popular for guys to shave lines into their eyebrows? No amount of penciling in covers it.
I too have to trim my eyebrows. That is in addition to the plucking. After I pluck I am left with less than half of my natural brow. Does that make sense outside of my head. It makes sense in my head but sometimes things get lost in translation. Anyway, I trim and then pluck because one time I plucked and then trimmed and discovered that I lost half an eyebrow in the trimming. I guess the hairs were longer than I thought. It took a week for things to grow back enough for the pencil to not be so necessary. I guess that is one perk to being a hairy broad. It doesn't take long to recover from bad brows.
ReplyDeleteu r not alone here - try a solution i found at sallys beauty supply that slightly numbs the spot u put it on and keeps hair from growing back, works really well on my stubborn italian chin hairs ps love this blog and cake wrecks, love ur crafts and diy
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain. My eyebrows are large and in charge. That's why I wax. Yes, I get someone else to attack them. It works pretty well, I think. For a week....or a few days...
ReplyDeleteAlthough, it is important to have someone waxing who knows what they are talking about. Esp since without some attention, my eyebrows join hands and sing songs. I had a waxing done where they somehow moved my eyebrows one inch to the left. both of them.
I was looking askance for a week.
I feel like I'm reading about myself... and I'm not even a particularly hairy person otherwise! I have to trim mine too, which I actually like to do since it cuts down on the amount of plucking I need to do. My obsession with my eyebrows continues into makeup--my only "must do" makeup steps before I leave the house include touch ups with a brow pencil (to make them look even if I plucked over-zealously)and clear mascara to stick them in place a little better, since they tend to stick in all directions like Harry Potter's hair...
ReplyDeleteI am also plagued by the crazed Jewish eyebrows. I spent years being told that I would be pretty if I only did something about them. It made me very resentful... of the people telling me that.
ReplyDeleteI hate plucking. HATE IT. Hate waxing. Hate pain. I'm a wuss. I also have very thick hairs--as in, the hairs themselves are thick and red. Very red. So anyway, I go the brilliant idea to Nair my eyebrows. I used the face Nair but it didn't cut it the first time around so I immediately (despite the directions specifically saying not to!) reapplied and guess what? The directions were right. I got a big ol' fat chemical burn on my eyebrows. I looked like a moron for like 2 weeks until the yellow-ish scabs fell off.
ReplyDeleteLesson here: don't Nair your eyebrows twice in a row.
I read you every day but have never had the nerve to comment. Today though I felt you might be talking to me. When I flew home for my bridal shower one of the first things my Aunt said to me was "Oh, thank God you finally got your eybrows under control." It has been a battle most of my adult life. I completely understand, and commiserate with you, I though blame my Italian ancestors. I have found that threading is by far the most effective way to deal with them. There are some great places around O-town. I usually go to the one at the big mall.
ReplyDeleteI am so with you.. my eyebrows can get quickly out of control! When I was about 14 I became really self-conscious of them and my upper lip (AAACK!) I decided to try to bleach my brows and lip. I didn't test it first and I ended up with bad burns on my eyebrows and both sides of my lips. They turned into nasy scabs.(EEEWWW!) I was so humiliated for weeks. After that I stick to plucking. lol.
ReplyDeleteHave you tried Threading? I know women of Middle Eastern or Greek descent who swear by threading.
ReplyDeleteI would secretly love to have visible eyebrows. If you are more than a foot or so away from my face... you see a space where my freckles are maybe blurry? They are a pale little mangy mess... I'm hoping that mating them with my hairy Brazilian husband means my son will have normal brows.
ReplyDeleteOn the up side... you could do Frida Kahlo for Halloween... or normal every day looks. Hmmmm, steam punk Frida: mechanical brows?
You too? ::Arches an eyebrow:: Fascinating. The best advice I can give you Jen, is relax. I too have eyebrows that most people 'in the know' would consider Vulcan. Seriously, no pencilling required; triangular and everything. And I have no trouble hopping into a StarFleet uniform on Halloween if the spirit moves me and making the most of them. Inherited from my father, they are the only part of my face that remind me of him, and so I keep them, daring to provoke societal scorn out of my love and admiration for him.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, he kept these eyebrows his whole life and never mentioned them once. Never made a big deal about it at all. They were a part of him and that was that. Life moved on. These eyebrows are a big lesson in self acceptance for me. I hope you are able to come to a truce with your own eyebrows soon, if not acceptance.
Peace, and long life.
~~Swan
I think you might be my doppelganger. The more posts I read from you, the more I discover we have in common. Separated at birth? Exposed to the same comic-book-style radiation? (that might explain the eyebrows) I've seen enough similarities to de-lurk and post silliness. I will be heading to WDW on the 23rd and will think of you when I see Spaceship Earth and call it by it's proper name. Viva La Geek!
ReplyDeleteI have more of a third little eyebrow above my nose. It's not a unibrow because the two above my eyes don't connect. It's like they got together and had a baby.
ReplyDeleteMy mom wouldn't let me pluck during grade school but once I tried shaving above my nose she relinquished the tweezers.
Try threading. After three threading sessions, the root is damaged and won't grow back. :)
ReplyDeleteI was just telling some friends the other day that I was always so upset to read my sister's old Seventeen magazines, or Allure, Cosmo, etc. They always said "DO NOT pluck your eyebrows above the arch!" WTF? What do you do when your brows are marching upwards into your hairline? (and down to meet your eyelashes on the bottom of the arch)
ReplyDeleteI have naturally curly hair, and my eyebrows are the same way...they curl and grow at amazing rates...I definitely feel your pain!
During my second month of college I watched Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' 5 times in a row, went to the communal bathroom at 3 in the morning and shaved off my eyebrows with a bare blade. Yup. Unfortunately they grew back in all their prodigious glory. Fortunately I made some life long friends who loved my 'free spirit'. ~*shakes head*~ I was sober too.
ReplyDeleteI'm one of those people that you hate, I only have to go chasing after strays now and then, but as I get older, I realize those strays are becoming more frequent! And how the heck does ONE grow an inch and a half long?! I'm with ya on the legs, sometimes I wish I could bathe in Nair. THAT is from my Italian side! Grrr! You'd think I could get something from my British side other than a love of bland oatmeal.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have crazy thick brows, but without the ethnicity to blame it on. I'm white as can be, but have my dad's unibrow. Lovely. I pluck, and sometimes bleach (carefully), but I learned a lot from this Metafilter thread: http://ask.metafilter.com/137351/How-to-deal-with-eyebrow-hairs-too-short-to-pluck.
ReplyDeleteWell ... I'm afraid I'm more in the boat of painfully sparse eyebrows. I actually wish a had more so that I could make them look ... well ... like something. As it is, I have to be careful with the little I have so I don't end up eyebrowless ... equally unappealing. So while I can't sympathize with the bushyness ... I do feel your pain in wishing my brows were something different. Love reading your blog ... thanks!
ReplyDelete@ Corinne - I lost it at "my eyebrows join hands and sing songs." BWAHAHAHAA!!
ReplyDeleteThank you.
And to the rest of you: I am by turns guffawing and feeling much, MUCH better. Y'all rock.
I actually had better luck with waxing than with tweezing or threading unlike several who are commenting here. I have thick, curly, Italian - VERY BLACK - eyebrows.....
ReplyDeleteI pay up the cash to have them waxed at least once a month at the salon. It leaves me with follicuals (little baby pimple things) but there are less and less the more I go. I also have to tweeze a few strays here and there in between visits. If you have a good pro, it does hurt a little, but not too bad. The only time I ever tried threading, it hurt like HELL!!! I've not tried it again. As far as actually trying to tweeze all the time, forget it! Who has the time?!? It would take MONTHS for just one eyebrow!
And for some irony... the word verification is: "redness" No Joke! LOL!
I have the exact opposite problem. I have no eyebrows. I don't know how it happened, but I was born with reeeeeeally light hair, & as I got older, my hair darkened out. Except for my eye brows. They stayed "did you shave your superciliary arch?" blond.
ReplyDeleteThere was this one time when I was young where I saw on the Olympics a woman with some strange eyebrows. Me, being the honors student that I was, thought it would be interesting to see what that would look like. On me. It was a weird thing with eyebrow, razor-thin-nothing & eyebrow again design.
I gave up after trimming the spot a little, but it was already obvious to me that I looked like a moron.
At least I didn't have much to call "eyebrows" in the first place.
I'm a theatre-kid, so I'm always being told "darken/exaggerate/define eyebrows" on make-up sheets. This can be loosely translated to "Kacy, for the love of all that is good, get out a dang pencil & draw something on your face."
I have a few light colored strays between the two brows, and some underneath them that is probably normal. But I'm a graduate student, I gave up makeup and tweezing years ago. Once a year I treat myself and get them threaded, such a nice change!
ReplyDeleteNope. I am firmly in the "OH GOD WHAT IS THAT ON YOUR FACE?!" camp when I let them go au naturale. Which is, um, never, these days. But for some reason my mother never saw fit to point out that I had giant furry caterpillars on my face. And my mom and older sister have pale, pale brows that can barely be seen, SOH I didn't really even realize plucking my dark brown brows (when the rest of my hair is blonde! what the hell!) was an option. Thus, I was something like 16 before I ever started managing them at all. At about age 15, a little girl announced, "YOU HAVE A UNI-EYEBROW." Semantics aside, I was not amused.
ReplyDeleteI really -need- to trim them, but I always make them look all goofy and uneven when I try. So I just do the best I can with my 3/4" long brow hairs. I blame my eyebrows on my dad. And my grandfather. I just hope mine don't ever look all old man crazy like theirs.
Exhibit A: Me and my horrific untamed eyebrows in 9th grade. Yyyyeah. In retrospect, I think I understand why I wasn't so popular with the boys.
Two words: Furry tiara.
ReplyDeleteIf I did nothing for my eyebrows EVER, I would have a furry tiara. It would go straight across my brow line, from hairline to hairline, and have a lovely little furry diamond in the center. It would be amazing..ly awful. I shiver thinking about it. Now I have to go pluck my eyebrows.
You are not alone! I always have to tweeze the day after I get my brows waxed. It's like the waxing simulates them or something! My bangs tend to hide my left eyebrow, so I get out of the shower only to find that my left eyebrow has managed to double in size while it was hiding. I blame my Russian heritage.
ReplyDeleteOh lord, I feel your pain! Deep, dark, curly, ANGRY, Cuban roots in my case, plus a hormonal disorder leads to waaaaaaay more facial hair than is strictly necessary in me. I have given in an allowed my eyebrows to maintain dominion on my forehead, but will still battle to the death over the bridge of my nose. :/
ReplyDeleteEyebrow troubles+ Bangs= No Problem*
ReplyDelete*note: bangs must be exactly the right length and positioned exactly right to hide said eyebrow troubles God have mercy on you and any innocent onlookers should there be wind, or, if you do something crazy like, you know...move your head
One of mine is shaped pretty well and just needs maintenance, but the hairs like to grow long, so they can get shaggy and out of place, and make me look like I need to pluck when I don't. The other doesn't have the same natural arch and it's very hard to get it matching the first! Completely obnoxious. I can never seem to get them even! Then again, the second doesn't get as long as the first.
ReplyDeleteAnd for all of you ladies who deal with pain and redness when you pluck, I use liquid Anbesol. It numbs the whole area, and for some reason, I don't get red. I gave up getting waxed because I'd have to keep a cold washcloth on my head for a couple of hours to start to look normal again, so not looking like a tomato is a bonus!
I an "Alfalfa" eyebrow. A handful of hairs grow in the compete opposite direction as their brothers and sister. No amount of waxing, plucking or trimming does any good.
ReplyDeleteI'm a grown ginger kid and have ghost eyebrows, you know they're there but they are impossible to the naked eye. Thus, I must have my eyebrows tinted, yes tinted. A Russian woman dyes my eyebrows (and eyelashes too) so I don't look like some sort of hairless cat. I'd say you've got it pretty good.
ReplyDeleteMy eyebrows get 5 o' clock shadow too! Such a pain D:<
ReplyDeleteI inherited my dad's eyebrows. This is not a good thing. I am less self conscious about it now, but in high school they were definitely my pet hate. In a moment of adolescent stupidity and fristration with the time-consuming process of plucking, one night I used a razor to trim them. Biiiig mistake. They got all stubbly and I had to shave them every day just to not look like Frida Kahlo. Finally, one night I had some crazy anxiety dream where I had eyebrows that grew so long they covered my eyes. I woke up at three in the morning and plucked as much as I could. My stubblebrows went back to being normal again, and lesson well learned!
ReplyDeleteI hate my eyebrows, I feel like mine are like furry angry Muppets on my face, I wish I had pretty arched brows. Then I see girls with nasty drawn on ones, girls with eyebrow stubble, mismatched eyebrows, eyebrows that are smeared or running.....and I like my natural Wookie brows because at least I look normal and not like some freak show clown with bad makeup or stubble face. And you know what....guys don't care...as long as you don't look like Frida Kahlo and have some space between your unibrow....they honestly don't notice.
ReplyDeleteNot only would I look like Frida Kahlo if I didn't pluck, but I occasionally get little hairs under where the nosepieces of my glasses go, and on my nose, and this one obnoxious one on my chin that grows in white so I can't see it, then suddenly turns black.
ReplyDeleteI have thick, dark eyebrows with a pretty decent arch that I've always been able to control myself. However for my wedding I figured I would get some pampering done and included my eyebrows in that whole mess. Let's just say that my idea of natural looking was not the same as the stylist's idea of natural looking.
ReplyDeleteLet's also just say that the day before your wedding is a really bad time to discover you have a bald spot right in the middle of your left eyebrow. I walked down the aisle with three eyebrows.
I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteI have crazy eyebrows and nothing I do seems to keep them at bay. I start with the determined "I will conquer these eyebrows" mentality. I wax, and tweeze between, and trim and groom appropriately. Nothing helps or lasts....so the "screw this, it won't work, just let them go" mentality takes over. Then, when 3/4 of my forehead is no longer visible, I once again attempt to control them.
Eventually, they'll take over completely, and all you'll see is the end of my nose sticking out from beneath the eyebrows.
Thank god I'm not alone. I have the same problem. My brows grow in days. It feels like I'm always plucking. I have to make sure to add plucking to the daily routine in case I get a stray dark hair in the space between my brows.
ReplyDeleteI've actually started trimming my brows with my boyfriend's mustache scissors. At least, I sure hope that's all he uses those little scissors for.
Why is it so much work to be a girl? I've got better things to do-- like napping or gaming.
I find the older I get, the longer they grow and I'll get these rogue ones that stick straight out. Age=bummer.
ReplyDeleteI am a natural blond (very light) and my eyebrows grow in every color! I find every shade of brown and black, too! They are very unruly, too. I recently found threading like "andygirl" suggested and that keeps them pretty tame for a few weeks at a time!
ReplyDeleteSo, in first grade my twins had to draw pictures of me for a "This is my family" beginning of the school year project. One's teacher made her draw eyebrows on the portrait of me. My daughter insisted that was wrong but her teacher insisted that I needed eyebrows. At back-to-school night, she apologized to my daughter after meeting me and realizing that I really don't have very visible eyebrows. Seems like we all have eyebrow issues, just not the same eyebrow issues.
ReplyDeleteI don't have horrible eyebrows, but I thought I did when I was 15. I wanted my eyebrows to look like the svelte brows I saw in fashion magazines. So I tried a do-it-yourself waxing kit and ended up losing half of my left eyebrow. Totally embarrassing. It's worth your time and money to have someone at a salon do the waxing for you. :)
ReplyDeletelast year i inquired if i could claim my eyebrows as a tax deduction, as a sustainable crop.
ReplyDeleteEyebrows are the least of my worries! I plucked one hair from my chin cause it was getting a little long and it came back as a full grown MONSTER! It's a never ending battle.
ReplyDeleteOpposite problem. I've never had great brows but what I did have, chemo took care of. I lost not only my brows but my lashes too. And of course, my hair. My lashes came back after I finished treatments but neither brows nor hair making a stunning comeback! I have a great wig and i have learned how to "make" my brows look natural and not "penciled".
ReplyDeleteI have a decent naturally shaped eyebrow but a little thick. I have never tried waxing but hate plucking so I thought I would try scotch tape to thin them out. It worked pretty good, if I did it a couple of times and then just plucked the rouge ones, you know the ones growing a bit off by themselves? Anyway one day I thoughtwhy do this three or four times, I bet duct tape would get it done in one pull! And it did! Thank goodness hair grows back!!!
ReplyDeleteIn my desire to be a multi-tasker, I learned that it is NOT a good idea to pluck eye brows while brushing your teeth.
ReplyDeleteTwo words: sneeze factor
What is it with our Jewish eyebrows? I thought we were the Chosen people; so why are we being punished? Slavery and oppression... from genetics!
ReplyDeleteMine at least stay plucked for a couple days (I feel you on the legs though...). My problem are the unruly hairs, it's like a fireworks explosion on my face sometimes. Once I tried using my boyfriend's hair styling wax on them and at the end of the day I realized I had just been walking around with unruly hairs and a really shiny forehead. There's no hope!
I too hate my eyebrows. I've tried waxing (ouch!), tweezing (ouch also!), and now I use a micro-trimmer to thin them out (I have wooly caterpillars over my deep-set eyes), and try to tweeze the short ones that the trimmer leaves behind.
ReplyDeleteI tried to 'trim' them back when I was 14, and ended up shaving the entire things off! I had to go to the lake that summer with my cousins, and they made fun of me the entire time. The next time I saw them after that, the first thing they said was, "Oh good! Your eyebrows grew back!" They have not let me live that down, to this day.
So I feel your figurative pain. I have no middle ground when it comes to my eyebrows. Glad I'm not alone!
I have to wax every 3-4 weeks or I get serious unibrow. I'm 35 and now I'm starting to get random WHITE hairs that stick straight out. Seriously? Oh, and to add to my monobrow woes, plucking makes me sneeze like I just inhaled pepper. No lie.
ReplyDeleteok, 3 things ::
ReplyDelete1 - your post, and the comments, have made me laugh out loud.
2 - i have similar brows, though i don't have the jewish heritage to blame. i'm as english as you can get in America without having just stepped off the plane, and i've got me some welsh brows. big thick hairy caterpillars, i swear. i've been told that they're quite nice, but i think that i look like i'm frowning if i don't raise my brows a little (almost like i'm suprised, but not quite.).
3 - oh lord, how i would LOVE to look like sarah.
I have trouble getting mine even. As in, one side wants to be one shape and the other side wants to be a different one, They're not so far off that it's noticeable to anyone else (I hope), so I just go with it.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, check these out:
http://shanalogic.com/item.php?item_id=1457&manufacturer_id=204
You are welcome.
Mary, you had me laughing with your "old man crazy" comment. I'm so glad I didn't inherit my dad's brows. He's in his 60's and my mom trims them for him when they get too bushy. It seems every visit I have to remind her to do it. "Dad's looking a little owlish." Like Secret of NIMH owlish!
ReplyDeleteMy Mother's maiden name is Moore... and all the ladies on the Moore side have the Moore eyebrows, complete with crafty curlies, unruly unibrow, and Grandpa Munster like brow wings... My Dad's side of the family has blessed me with lady side burns, lady mustache, and most recently: lady chin hairs...
ReplyDeleteSO, in summation...I feel your pain!!! I feel the pain of years of tweezing and plucking and pulling and waxing...and don't even get me started on all the other hair maintenance issues us follicly fertile females feel flustered about!!!
As I get closer to menopause, my eyebrows have started to change direction. I now have these thick, dadk antenae growing above my eyes. Since the antenae are rooted directly to my scull, I've given up tweezing and now I simply clip.
ReplyDeleteI definitely lean toward the bushy side in the eyebrow department. I used to pluck them super thin in high school and college, but I let them grow in a little bit thicker and they look better that way I think. But if I stopped plucking completely I think I'd have a unibrow. There are some pretty hideous grade school pictures of my eyebrows - I mean, me. With eyebrows.
ReplyDeleteLeg (and arm) hair? Don't get me started. I guess some of us are just gifted.
1.) I feel better about my own brow and chin-hair woes.
ReplyDelete2.) I'm googling Frida what's her name to see what in the world you are talking about. Evidently I've missed something.
3.) It's past midnight and I have to teach tomorrow, but I'm still reading 'cause your posts make me laugh.
4.) I'm only quitting for the night because I drank too much and that doesn't mix with belly laughs. (You could do a similar post on those issues :-(
Tomorrow I will drink less before bed and finish reading the great comments.:-)
I can sympathize with the leg hair dilemma. I have very dark, very thick leg hair and very very pale skin (think Dracula after a long winter). So, even after shaving, it looks like I have stubble.
ReplyDeleteThe proof? There has been not one, but TWO times where my sister has asked if I last shaved a day or two ago and she has had to FEEL MY LEG because she didn't believe that I shaved an hour or less ago!
Jen! I'm so glad that you put a post like this up! I am constantly getting compliments on the shape of my brows but I am FAR too lazy to keep them pretty. I generally only get them shaped when my best friend gets tired of seeing them and pins me down and shapes them out.
ReplyDeleteAs for hairy legs....once again I TOTALLY agree, 2 days post shaving and I get what my roommates lovingly call the "Man Legs". Luckily with the advent of thick socks and women wearing pants I can save myself the pain, frustration, and financial drain that is taking care of my hairy legs.
Those suffragettes knew WHAT WAS UP.
Frida Kahlo: "Perhaps best known for her self-portraits, Kahlo's work is remembered for its "pain and passion", and its intense, vibrant colors. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form."- Wikipedia
ReplyDeleteThere you have it... whether you are pained by or are passionate about your eyebrows you shuld celebrate them for their uncompromising depiction of our female experience. LOL The picture does look a little pained.
I don't have a problem with length, but I totally get you on the 5 o'clock shadow. I have to check my brows every night. And then there are the three hairs at the inner corners that stand straight up. Irish eyebrows. :(
ReplyDeleteIf Frida Kahlo and Groucho Marx had a love child, I would have said love child's eyebrows. I have plucked them only to find I've plucked enough hair to make wigs for cancer patients and it's at the point where I thread them at least once a day in order to tame the wild beasts. (Left unthreaded, they are like Bert's from Sesame Street.)
ReplyDeleteDuring my first waxing experience, my mother and her hair dresser (after having a short chat in hushed whispers) pounced on me, held me down on the fancy chair and ripped the little guys out without warning me what was to happen. I'm pretty sure I ended up crying in fear... At least it's a good story!
Waxing hurts, but it's over quick. I don't have too much of a problem with maintaning my eyebrows it's my stupid skin UNDER my eyebrows. I wax, and my skin breaks out for a WEEK afterwards. Nothing worse than a big old zit next to your pretty eyebrows.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, now I thread them, and had much better luck.
Oh eyebrows! I found a fantastic person who waxed and trimmed my crazy long curly brows to perfection. Then I made a serious mistake, while I holidays, I cheated on my beautician (GASP) and went to someone else. I was paid back tenfold though, I have lost part of my right eyebrow. Or I should say right eyebrows as my eyebrows spilt off in 2 different directions, one way to the hairline and the other way to the eye (divide and conquer). I am too scared to go back to my normal beautician because she will know.
ReplyDeleteGet yourself to Sephora ASAP! They've got "Brow Gel" that works wonderfully. It looks like mascara but it's clear & doesn't flake the way mascara (even the clear mascara) will. It's really calmed my eyebrows down & I guess the daily application "brushing" has trained them to stay smoother lol.
ReplyDeleteJen- Thanks for being the voice of those with living with post traumatic eye-brow issues. Mine have always been sparse, giving them a "patchy" (some might even say "shaved") effect. I had the distinct misfortune of growing up in the Vanilla Ice era... You can draw your own pre-pubescent nightmare conclusions at this point. I'll just say that to this day, I still cringe at the phrase "Word to your mother!"
ReplyDeleteI don't have an eyebrow story, because I refuse to pluck, wax, or destroy my eyebrows. It's just not worth the slight pain for me. I did have to comment, though, to say that you are not the only one ruled by the awesomeness of Labyrinth. I think you might just be my long lost (and more talented) twin, by the way! Together we could go dance with the fieries and oogle Jareth. Are you with me? ;)
ReplyDeleteI literally just finished watching Labrynth and turned on the computer to check your blog. I... I think I love you.
ReplyDeleteI am not skilled in the least when it comes to eyebrows. I didn't even know I was supposed to do anything with them until a friend I went to college with recommended that I try to groom them, years after college btw. While attempting to pluck them myself I noticed that about half my eyebrow was gone, (the long ways, that is) when I decided to stop. Then I learned I could just pay someone $10 to wax them once a month, or so, into the shape society decided they should grow naturally in the first place. So that's what I did; after they grew back, of course...
ReplyDeleteI have my mother and father to thank for my ample eyebrows. My sister plucked hers so much when she was younger that her brows only go half way across now. Me, I gave up on getting mine waxed or plucked years ago when I gave up wearing makeup. The only ones I grapple with are the occasional really long ones (usually white as I get older) that just don't match the rest.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah! Two bloggers I can totally relate to today. :) Anyway, yes, I totally share your pain. The last time I braved up and had them waxed (My best friend was getting married, so it was for a good cause!), the spa lady took one long look and said, "Ooo, you've got such nice, THICK eyebrows!" Hmm, I'm thinking that's not the nicest complement, especially coupled with that really concerned look on your face and the fact that you just ran to the next room to get more wax.
ReplyDeleteAt least you have Eyebrows... I have Eyebrow! LOL
ReplyDeleteOhhhhh. I feel you. My eyebrows aren't too swarthy, but the rest of me? Erm. Yeah. I have Jewish roots, too, is there something to the stereotypes? I think there's hormone stuff involved, too, though. And German stuff. I don't think of Germans as particularly hairy, but there must be a related clan somewhere who can braid their happy trails. I know there are other cultures where women get together and dipilitate, which I wish I belonged to. I do hope people with just the right amount of hair in only the right places are thankful and feel blessed. And that the menfolk involved with shaggy women are gracious and accepting. Sorry to do a mild hijack, your cactus-after-shaving comment just resonated.
ReplyDeleteI have a similar problem, which I also blame on my Jewish roots. I'm sure I'm not the first one to suggest waxing over tweezing, but I really think it works better. OR, you can do what I usually do, which is just grow your bangs out long enough that your eyebrows hide under them.
ReplyDeleteAS FAR AS THE "one more to even it up" thing goes, my sister gave me piece of perfect advice one time. It is advice that I will hold close to my heart for the rest of my life, and that I will now share with you and all of your readers. Your eyebrows are sisters, not twins. They will never look like perfect mirror images of each other. The best thing to do is make your peace with that and carry on. After all, you have a husband who loves you, two very successful blogs and an adoring public. Maybe perfect eyebrows just aren't in the cards for you.
My eyebrow on the left side is apparently too close to the hinges of my new glasses. I keep getting my eyebrows pulled accidentally. Rather painful. Glasses stuck on eyebrow hair, then pull hair.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got to the age where I wanted to "pretty up" my eyebrows, I had a pro tweeze them, then I kept it up. After a short while, they didn't grow in again. When Brooke Shields came along, I was left out with thin brows! I have removed my mustache and chin hairs with electrolysis. Painful, but permanent, costing less in time and money over the long run. I don't see why it wouldn't work with eyebrows.
ReplyDeleteI have had eyebrow problems my entire life. They are shaped differently from each other & no matter how hard I try I can't get them the same. They also like to encroach on my eyelids, forehead, & each other.
ReplyDeleteEarly one summer when I was 13 or 14 I decided that plucking my uni-brow was taking too long & that shaving would be much more efficient: HUGE MISTAKE! I ended up shaving my left eyebrow clean off! Thankfully I worked in the raspberry fields all summer so wearing my wide brimmed hat low over my eyes did the trick until it grew back.
I discovered waxing a couple of years ago, but never went back because of the price. Nowadays, I just pluck as often as possible. Besides the obvious chore this is due to sheer volume, under my eyebrows is a nerve that connects directly to my tear ducts & on the left side, my sneeze reflex! I think I'm due at the waxer's soon.
Thank you for being so open to talking about these women's issues that no one ever mentions. Reading all the comments helped me know I'm not alone! Now, does anyone know what to do about female sideburns?
I have my dad's Slovak brows, a very high arch that potentially can be defined with waxing, et al. However, the damned things grow all the way into my crease. So basically, I've got brows have way up my fivehead, to almost on my eyelid.
ReplyDeleteI would sympathize, since my brows tend to have a mind of their own, but I'm too busy dealing with my mustache and chin whiskers. The 'stache has been a problem for decades, but I thought I wouldn't have to deal with my chin until menopause. It appears I was wrong!
ReplyDeleteughh eyebrows..just the thought makes me cringe. I began the war with my eyebrows in 5th grade..when I first began to care. Actually, that's not entirely true. The war on hair dates all the way back to nap time in preschool. This incident haunts me to this day. You see, there I was, minding my own business, napping on the preschool room floor, when the kid sleeping on the mat next to me decides to yell out to the whole class how hairy my arms were.
ReplyDeleteThis hairiness extended to my brows. I began getting them waxed in middle school. Even my mom felt bad for me. Just when I thought all my eyebrow problems were behind me, I woke up one morning with segmented vitiligo smack dab above my right eyebrow. (vitiligo is a skin disorder that pretty much causes the color pigment in the skin to turn off...and turn white...most people know it as the disease Michael Jackson had. Mine is segmented meaning I got it in one small space and it will never get worse than that). Anyway, half my dang eyebrow is now white! When I do get myself to the eyebrow waxer, they usually complain that they can't even see my eyebrow well enough to wax it correctly. Aww well, I've come to terms with my albino eyebrow..
I've been blessed with thick, dark hair (eyebrows, arms, legs, um, *other*) and very pale skin, so even if I've shaved and/or plucked perfectly, you can STILL SEE THE HAIR UNDER THE SKIN! How unfair is that?
ReplyDeleteWaxing's tricky too--more than once I've been turned into an anime girl (and not one of the cute ones) by an overzealous Asian woman with a vendetta against facial hair.
Best (worst?) eyebrow story? When I was in high school, my hair dresser found a VERY long hair growing on the bridge of my nose a good 1/2" down from the brow line, and announced it to the entire salon! To this day, I still paranoidly check each morning to make sure that hair has been plucked...
I've had pretty decent luck with laser hair reduction on my legs. It's expensive, but it's lovely having so much less and softer, lighter hair. (Just ask my husband!) Works best on pale skin with dark hair, but they have different lasers now for darker skintones.
My brows are blessedly low maintenance, but as long as we're sharing funny stories...When my mother was 16 or so she plucked her eyebrows for the first time. Given that she'd never done it before, she went quite a bit overboard. Well, they NEVER grew back. Would that I had her hair growing genes! (Everything below my brows is "gifted" at growing hair. Ugh.)
ReplyDeletePS: I loved, love, and will continue to love the way Sarah looks in the ball scene. She's so incredibly beautiful, and though my brows may be Sarah-able, the rest of me is certainly not!
I have never felt the need or desire to do anything with my eyebrows, but that could just be cause they're really well behaved. Although, I don't think I'd do anything with them no matter how they looked. All that effort seems so pointless to me.
ReplyDeleteBut, I guess good luck with it? I've threading is real nice.
I love my eyebrows.
During a night of drinking with my older (and meaner) brother, he took it upon himself to critique my eyebrows. Have you noticed that you will live your whole life never noticing your eyebrows until someone mentions them? Then all of a sudden your face becomes just two GIANT eyebrows??? Well, in my drunken state, hurt by my brother's beauty assesment, I went home and drunkenly plucked my eyebrows. Word of advice...Never under ANY circumstance...pluck while under the influence!!! To fix this I had to "draw" my eyebrows in which gave me the "inquisitor" (Where one eyebrow is drawn in higher than the other, my grandmother gets this often and is constantly looking like she's in a state of contemplation or pondering evil deets) ugh. I leave all brow grooming to professionals now.
ReplyDeleteI also have your problems Jen. I am finding that threading seems to be working so far though.
ReplyDeleteMy main problem, though, is that when anyone (including me) plucks my eyebrows it causes me to sneeze. Not so bad when just me at home, but very bad when someone is threading them! I hold my nose to try to stop myself but that just makes my eyes water! So, not only do I have the red eyebrows of shame after doing them, I also have a streaming nose and red eyes that look like the experience was soooo horrific I sobbed for hours!
I have a uni-brow! It has tortured me for years. When I was a teenager I had this smart idea that shaving it would solve all my problems, uh huh, that did not work amd I ended up with next to no brow at all. I also tried bleaching it however, since I have jet black hair it just turned orange.
ReplyDeleteI now pluck almost daily and still have bushy eyebrows (though thankfully I dont have to trim them!) I did go through a phase in younger years where I had plucked almost all the hairs from my brow - not a good look!
I also have a very hairy body - hair on my fingers and toes is perhaps the most embarassing!
You are not alone!
I'd suffer my unibrow if I could just get my legs to stay smooth for more than the first pass with the razor.
ReplyDeleteWhen I my hand over them immediately after.. I can already feel the stubble.
FML.
I am so short sighted that to be able to see what I'm doing when plucking, I have to be about 5cms away from the mirror. This makes it difficult to compare them and when I finally gave up and started to get them threaded, the the lady told me off for making such a horrible mess of them.
ReplyDeleteI also have Jewish roots, and although I am blessed with the ability to tan, I couldn't even contemplate shaving as I would look like the rough side of velcro. Have you tried using an epilator? It grows back soft!
I've been fighting a war against mine since high school - I'm 40 now. In college my boyfriend's roomie told me I plucked them too thin (he came out of the closet sometime after we graduated). My ruthlessness with tweezers has resulted in a permanent thinness of the brows, but I still have to do some maintenance. I've been noticing the curly ones in recent years, but worse are the "stray eyebrow hairs" - so-called by an older friend of mine - that I find on my chin. In self-defense, they've given up on the high ground, and are retreating to a far more embarrassing location. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteAlso, mustache wax is a pretty good way to "style" brows.
My horrifying eyebrows are mostly calmed by this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.walmart.com/ip/Stiles-Razor-For-Eyebrows-Razor-1-ct/10317346 since I can't wax (days of swelling and redness = not worth it) and won't pluck (ouch!). This thing takes me 2 minutes at most. LOVE IT! And then I use a brow brush to brush them straight up, take the cuticle scissors to trim the incredibly long ones in the middle and I'm good! I can even scrape away anything that grows back while I'm at work without it being an issue. I love these things!
Never messed with my eyebrows... too busy dealing with teh hair everywhere else :(
ReplyDeleteI have the exact opposite issue... my eyebrows only go about halfway over my eye. The rest is there, but blonde for some reason :c
ReplyDeleteI have tried coloring that hair, drawing the rest of it in (as you said, just doesn't work), shaving them for months trying to get them to grow in darker, etc, etc, nothing works.
About like this guys, except I'm female and the 'missing' parts of mine are way lighter
Oh Jen you are so not alone. I have a little trimmer I use to trim the hairs shorter because mine curl too. I get my eyebrows from my dad. I also have a spot on the left one where there isn't really any hears growing so it can look a bit odd at times, but meh. And I can relate to the plucking, only to discover the next day that it would seem I missed some hairs somehow, or maybe they were simply hiding to avoid the inevitable.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many comments here, mine will likely be lost, but that's probably a good thing. Because I am confessing to something heinous. My adorable child, blessed with all kinds of beauty (unlike her mother) has one tiny flaw. When she raises her eyebrows, she looks like a cute little jack-o-lantern. Now that she is old enough, she gets them waxed, but every now and then, when she wants something, I make her raise them, so I can laugh and laugh. Then I give her what she wants. She is horribly spoiled, with a horse and everything, so I don't feel bad at all.
ReplyDeleteMy eyebrows are fine but lets talk about the hair that grows in (after you turn 40) in places women shouldn't have hair. (Well, no, not THAT hair) I am talking about chin whiskers! OMG I have one that no matter how many times I pluck the little bugger out it keeps coming back - bigger and badder each time! I'm just hoping that by the time I reach 50 I don't have to shave every day!
ReplyDeleteI have giant eyebrows. No joke. My daughter (who is I'm seriously not joking the most gorgeous 7 year old child I have ever seen) has giant eyebrows. I'm not exactly sure where we get them because everyone else in my family has great eyebrows. I, on the other hand, do absolutely nothing to hide or change the fact that I have giant caterpillars sitting above my eye sockets. It's a process.
ReplyDeleteYou, me and Michael Dukakis, right? I've been trimming and plucking my unibrow since my late teens (pushing 40 now). Thing is, I'm pretty good at it, as in, I get compliments on my eyebrows. Mostly from women who wish theirs were fuller. Waxing is the devil. I'd like to try threading, though.
ReplyDeleteOy. Can't commiserate about the eybrows. But he leg hair--I'm so there. I losing battle I've fought for too many years.
ReplyDeleteIn high school, I went had my eyebrows done at the frou-frou salon my sister was working at. I also have a habit of continuously arching one brow in bemusement/"really?!"look. I must have been doing this the entire time she was tweezing. Which resulted in a)super thin eyebrows (as i wanted them "even" and b) one brow higher then the other. This was then immortalized in my senior yearbook photos.
ReplyDeleteMoral of the story: Things can only get better.
Eyebrows aside (though I, too, suffer the "Eyebrows Unite!" rebellion), I totally feel you on the "ambulatory cactus" thing! SOOO irritating! lol
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 12 my mother looked at me with disdain in her eyes and kindly said (in her heavy eastern european accent):
ReplyDeleteNatalija, you are the kind of woman who needs to keep tweezers in her handbag.
This proved to be alarmingly true, as my eyebrows, like my mama's accent, seem to be heavily eastern european.
My mama and my sister somehow evaded the eyebrow issue I did not. After many years of self plucking daily (often, as mama predicted, several times a day) my sister and I went to see a woman called
'Carmen the Eyebrow Queen.'
Yes, I too lifted my eyebrow at this (no easy feat).
Whilst Carmen did a fairly great job at shaping my eyebrows, the real hero of my time with her was this piece of advice:
'Don't touch, pluck, wax, pull, thread (etc) your eyebrows for 3 weeks.'
Just don't do it. Apparently, eyebrows have a lifespan of 3 weeks, and if you pluck daily (as you seem to do) you have messed with their lifespan.
If you let them all, slowly, painstakingly, terrifyingly, grow. For 3 weeks. No less. Then they are ALL OUT AT THE SAME TIME.
And then you go and get then shaped and waxed by a pro, money is not wasted here, i promise.
Then comes the good part...NO EYEBROWS WILL GROW BACK FOR 3 WEEKS.
Yes, it's true. Those caps weren't a mistake.
I enjoy some pretty rockin' eyebrows now, I've embraced they are big and dark and...totally awesome.
I hope that was some help!
Natalija
P.s I've never commented before as I'm a daily reader from Australia, and by the time I read your posts there are loads of comments already and it's too late to try and win any of your gorgeous prizes, BUT seeing as this post really spoke to me, I had to leave a really long winded comment...even if i'm the 80-something-th person to do so.
x
Well, you know, according to my Crazy Dave calendar, yesterday was Give Your Eyebrows A Perm Day --- so maybe try that??? :-D
ReplyDeleteI totally feel your pain Jen! My eyebrows are out of control, and curl as well, and yet, the hair on top of my head is stick straight!!! WTF??!!
ReplyDeleteI get a stern lecture from the beautician who waxes them every time I go because when I try to do a little maintenance between visits, I ALWAYS over-pluck the same spot on my right brow, because it's the most unruly patch!! So it *must* go!
So far I haven't tried threading (mostly because the only place to get it done is smack in the middle of the mall concourse!), but I might give it a try one day. Until then, I wax them about every 4-6 weeks and try my girly bestest not to wreak tweezer havoc on them in between.
It's a daily struggle though, so I feel your pain!
I too was a young girl with caterpillar brows. I never really thought they were a big problem. My mom never mentioned plucking or anything, most likely because my older sister was an over-plucker. Finally, one day when I was about 15, I was at the salon to have a haircut, and as I was being shampooed, the woman told me to close my eyes and relax. Next thing I knew, there was something HOT being spread on my face! My mom had told them to "shape things up" and no one warned me! Now I just pluck to keep things in shape, and if I'm having a cowlick brow day, I use clear mascara to keep them in line.
ReplyDeleteMy step-sister was also one of the legion of young women who decided to Nair their brows. She burnt them almost completely away and the scabs stayed for weeks. *Shudder* I'd rather be ambush-waxed anytime than have the big burns she had.
My eyebrows are OK--bushy, with some unibrow, but I can usually manage to ignore them--but my chin hairs are (were) infuriating. I used to obsessively pluck them, with my fingers if I was at work or something (trying not to let others see I was doing it) and tweezers at all other times. I decided to get electrolysis as sort of an end run around my OCD and I have to say, it worked out pretty well, though it took quite a while and there is still the odd hair to pluck... I could probably have obliterated them all eventually, but basically I got tired of going and stopped. But my few weeks as the bearded lady, growing it out on purpose so the electrologist could see what he was dealing with, were AWFUL. It does hurt but maybe this would be an option if your brows are really driving you nuts? For such a small area it shouldn't be too horrible. On the other hand it's right near your EYEBALL. Pros and cons, I guess.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, having read this thread I am very tempted to go get waxed. Back when I had a real job I used to work just up the road from my hair salon, so I would pop in there on my lunch hour and get a brow and bikini (nothing too drastic! Just the parts that encroach on my legs) wax. I always felt so tidy and pretty afterward. :)
I didn't need to pluck too terribly much from my brows, but I did have to trim them down (I'd brush them straight up with an eyebrow comb and trim). I did however get a bit overzealous with the plucking as can easily happen. Between that and the premature gray, after awhile I was having to really fill them in with makeup. I eventually got to the pluck-them-completely-draw-them-back-in stage. After awhile I gave up and got them tattooed on, lol. Now I have to pluck a few hairs every day to keep them smooth. They turned out rather nice imo although they ended up a bit too high so I do look a bit perpetually bemused. XD
ReplyDeletemy eyebrows
I have some eyebrow issues... but CHIN HAIRS! Those are really the annoying ones!
ReplyDeleteIt seems that you have come to the right group of people :) I too suffer from extreme hair growth. I have found a very skilled group of ladies from India that know their way around eyebrow shaping. For a mere $10 they thread my brows to perfection. I still have to pluck between threadings, but it is so much easier now.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this might make you smile and maybe forget your eyebrows momentarily (if you haven't already seen it that is).
ReplyDelete*sigh* What more could/should be said about brows?
ReplyDeleteMine have a "cowlick" in them. No joke. Part of them want to grow in the wrong direction no matter now much pleading and goop I put on them to play nice with the other brow hairs. Thankfully they are the hairs that are closest to the nose region, so plucking the heck out of them doesn't do too much damage to make me look retarded. But the other hairs seem to be sparse. So on the rare occassion that I actually have time and energy to put makeup on (which is usually only when hubby and I go on a date WITHOUT the kids), I "paint" some kinda matching brown eyeshadow on said brow area to help disguise the fact that I have renegade brow hairs that refuse to show up to the party.
Don't fret too much, Jen. I had a period of life (say, high school?) where I got into plucking so much that for a while it looked like I didn't have any brows. *head-bang-on-desek*
-Carrie
jaynabug @ gmail . com
I feel your pain. Mine aren't that thick, but the ones I have grow way long unless I trim them, and their natural shape is not appealing. So, I trim, I wax, I pluck, I comb them every morning,use brow powder to fill them in and I have been known to use a stencil to attempt to shape them. Also, one has scar so even after all that work they never "match" one looks better than the other, so my bangs hang over one eyebrow.
ReplyDeleteI get up each morning and face problem starting me in the face! I purchased one of those mini electric trimmers that comes with an attachment with short and long length. It's like a flow-be for your brows! It works for trimming uniformly better than trying small scissors. Using scissors so close to my eyes freaks me out. But alas, like so many, pluck and trim at 6am, regrowth by 6pm. Although it could be worse, my sister's eyebrows all fell out after having her second baby and have yet to grow back 2 years later. I've offered to be her donor when they come up with transplant options.
ReplyDeleteI have these eyebrows that look like Groucho Marx and Lucille Ball had furry red headed eyebrow babies if left unchecked. They're just so busy. They actually have a nice natural shape they just are so bushy that I think an indigenious tribe of pygmy leprechauns might beable to hide under them. The only thing that works for me is plucking them to keep them in check and thin them out. Good luck with your eyebrow woes.
ReplyDeleteJen, my brow is awful. I use the singular because, if left to its own devices, I'd look like Bert on Sesame Street.
ReplyDeleteTo top it off, I am terribly picky about them. I notice lovely brows on women (check out Cameron's brows on House, they're the best ones on tv) and admire them. Yet I cannot recreate them on myself. I have to have them waxed, I cannot bring myself to pluck more than the uni in the center, for fear of damaging them. I prefer a small Asian lady at a nail salon to do them, but I've been having good luck with the same girl who cuts my hair.
Oh the trials and tribulations we must suffer!
I just gave up. For a little while I would wax them (OW) to keep something resembling a shape, but it was too much work. I just make sure I don't develop a unibrow and leave it at that (And oh, after a few days, I do).
ReplyDeleteI rather like thick eyebrows, anyway. It just looks unnatural when women have these tiny little threads above their eyes.
Also, not having to wear mascara is awesome. Though I hear you on the cactus-legs. I love being Italian, really.
Sorry, Jen I have the opposite problem.... If I am not nice to my brows and lashes they fall out. You heard me- Fall out! If I get irritated with my blond lashes and put on some mascara, when I wash my face the lashes come off with the mascara. I am forced to just use eyeliner and hope the summer sun doesn't bleach my brows to match my lashes.
ReplyDeleteI grew up hearing "you're so lucky, you have Brooke Shields eyebrows." I was always told NOT to pluck my eyebrows, and I didn't. Until I enrolled in a modeling class (I'm 6') and the poor woman in charge spent half an hour one evening trying to tame my eyebrows. So embarassing, and yet... I'll forever be grateful for her attempt to subdue them.
ReplyDeleteSo I pluck just about every morning. First I do the ones that sprout up overnight outside of the eyebrow boundary line. Then I look for the ones that have just gotten too long - they're usually curly and after I wake up they're pretty obvious. Then just for good measure I pluck out a few more, to keep things on the thin side.
Once in awhile I'll skip a couple of days and then it's just horrifying and overwhelming to get back on it and keep them neat.
And the worst is that I have very little eye lashes. Now that just isn't fair! >:/
I personally don't have to trim my eyebrows or really pluck them (don't throw things! I can't help it!) but I do have a good eyebrow story.
ReplyDeleteIn college (and now), I had a "personal" trimmer. That was not used for my eyebrows. If you catch my drift. And I had a roommate who had unruly eyebrows. And who was prone to snooping and using other people's items when we weren't there. So one time I came back from the weekend, opened our dorm door to find my roommate standing in front of the mirrow using my "personal" trimmer on her eyebrows!
The knowledge of where it had been and where it was now was punishment enough for her snooping through my drawers to find it in the first place.
My mom and sister had to hold me down to pluck my eyebrows the first time. And then, my mom complains about having to shave her legs every.... 2 weeks? If I don't shave every day I look like a yeti. Or, well, possibly a gorilla.
ReplyDeleteOMG... If I shave, by the afternoon, my legs look like they did that morning before I did. My eyebrows? they aren't so bad, but its the hair that seems to want to grow on my upper lip and on my chin and neck that makes me feel like Quasimodo. Laser hair removal is expensive, and I'm saving, but right now, my tweezers and I have a love/hate relationship. I pluck all those nasty, infiltrating hairs, but then two more sprout where I pull one! its not fair. I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteAll I have to say is that you gotta love the Munsters.....I named my dog after one of the characters. Eddie Munster because as a pup, he looked just like Eddie. (I know, I shouldn't be old enough to even know who The Munsters are, blame TV Land. lol) They don't make shows like they used to. Oh, btw, I don't have problems with my eyebrows because they are so blonde, they are practically invisible....thought I should comment on topic now lol
ReplyDeleteI don't have eyebrow issues. In fact my eyebrows are pretty good and I've only plucked maybe twice in my life out of curiosity but never again.
ReplyDeleteI do however have leg hair issues. Seriously, I get 2pm shadow. True story: I got WAXED last week and I was prickly inside of 5 minutes!!!! This has caused me much angst. I pretty much just let 'em grow and wear jeans at all times of the year. (Being 30 years single helps this look). I also have stray chest hair. Maybe a dozen deep, dark, black chest hairs that sit right there, waving to all who can see. *cries*
I've come to the conclusion that if the stupid stuff wasn't meant to grow there, then it wouldn't. There's obviously a reason there is hair so I give up fighting it.
That said, if I could ever afford to have that laser thing done where it kills the hair completely and 'never' grows back, I'd do it in a flash.
I have bushy eyebrows. I pluck and pluck and brush and trim and still have hairs that decide they want to grow the complete opposite direction of the others.
ReplyDelete*Sigh*
I've tried following tutes for perfect shapes, tried waxing (never again) creams and even really thinning them. But somehow they always just come right back to the same messy blobs.
My sis says they are perfect, but she got the uni and hates my bushy separates anyway. At least hers are blond and blend in. *rolls eyes*
And now, off to the mirror for some needed plucking because I've been lazy with it lately and they might just get the idea they can take over.
Mine are the same way! They always get brushed on accident so that they're pointing down and leaving holes in my eyebrow line.
ReplyDeleteEspecially when I get my hair cut and the lady combs my hair in front of my face. She always combs my eyebrows down, and my hands are under the plastic drape so I can't fix them. I just have to stare at them in the mirror wondering why I was given such horrible eyebrows.
Ooh! Read "Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging" by Louise Rennison. The author captures all of our first just-one-more-to-even-it-out tweezing experiences until the teen heroine is "very surprised looking in one eye."
ReplyDeleteThanks for another great post!
Marcy
Unruly eyebrows go back generations in my family linneage... The kind you could shape into facinating handle mustaches, only eyebrows. The kind that you can brush up your forehead and create a hair piece for yourself. The kind that need daily maintnance and punnishment. My GREAT grandmothers eyebrows are still firmly planted in my memory... Large and incharge! Does waxing help? no. Plucking help? No. Trimming help? No. Burning? yes maybe but possibly dangerous, hmm. From the time I realized I had psycho eyebrows (probably age 13 when I finally realized I was a girl.) I have had to do a combination of pluck, trim, wax and use eyebrow gell, the stuff that keeps them in place, like hairspray for your eyebrows. I HIGHLY suggest it. I've become an eyebrow expertise since then. And I swear I will never let my mother's eyebrows be like Great grandmas, EVER.
ReplyDeleteThe end.
My eyebrows aren't too bad (I got really lucky....I pluck a few a day to keep them at bay and in line). No, it's the chin hair and my mustache that are the bane of my existance!! My mother has full on whiskers, and I refuse at 38 to let it come to that for me. When you have to tell mom, "for the love'a all that's holy, PLEASE GO SHAVE!".....that's some bad genes, right there.
ReplyDeleteI pluck those babies every day (what is with the squirrly ones that appear, one inch long under my chin overnight?!) and use Nair. But it is a losing battle. My 11 year old tells me I have a mustache. So wrong.
I wish eyebrows were my biggest facial hair problem. I have a HUGE problem with picking at my fact, so I've ended up with chin stubble where I keep pulling the hairs out. Of course this has been going on for so long now that every time the hairs grow back they are darker. It'd be so much easier to be a man and just shave.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, my eyebrows are also mental. I have a patch on one of them that grows in every direction possible. They also grow down to my eyelids if I leave them for long enough. Again, it would be so much easier if I were a man.
I'm with the others: THREAD THEM! It's awesome, inexpensive and practically painless. I consider myself low maintenance as far as grooming, and I love this technique.
ReplyDeleteI'm not Jewish, but I AM Lebanese. And I have the same mascara-free lashes as you that are completely DWARFED by my giant Grouchos. They even get split ends. I'm not lying. But I don't ever really need an umbrella, since the rain never makes it past them.
ReplyDeleteThreading hurts like you don't even know, and in the last town I lived the only place you could get it done was the middle of the mall with everyone walking by looking at you like some kind of carnival side-show, so I switched to waxing. Still hurts, but worth it.
Why not Electrolysis or Laser hair removal to avoid ever plucking again?
ReplyDeleteAck-- my problem is not over-grown eyebrows (mine are thankfully pretty manageable), but about 10 years ago just before I was in a friend's wedding, I had them waxed by a too-busy salon worker, who waxed too far over one eye. AND THE HAIR HAS NEVER GROWN BACK. So now I have to tweeze too far over the other eye, lest my brows make my face look lopsided. Up until then, I would have said waxing was the way to go, as it gets easier on your face each time. Probably, that is because it's killing the eyebrows' will to live in the first place. :/
ReplyDeleteI too am in the eyebrow hell club. I will pluck and pluck and pluck, and 2 days later there will be this one hair off all by itself, and I'll have no idea how it got there in only 2 days.
ReplyDeleteI've tried various ways of trimming the hairs ... One time, I tried one of those little finishing touch trimmers. It has something you slide over the trimmer, so that you're trimming instead of shaving. Well, it came off while I was trimming the hair and I shaved off half my eyebrow!! That was really bad.
I thought I was the only person who had major Eyebrow Issues! I regularly tell my husband "have I mentioned to you lately how much I hate my eyebrows?". I also have to shave my legs every morning, and they're stubbled by the end of the day! I curse the North American ideal of beauty that says it's unfeminine to be hairy. :P
ReplyDeleteI don't have any advice but I DO have a good story. A few months before I got married, I went to visit my future mother-in-law at her place of business. Three words: Vietnamese nail shop.
ReplyDeleteClearly we have cultural and language barriers to begin with, but on this day I had no idea. I walked in, chatted for a minute with her, then she and her co-worker grabbed my by the arms and took me to a back room where they keep the hot wax. No asking, just brute force. The pushed me down to the table, and started slathering the hot wax.
If that's not scary enough....here's the kicker. NEITHER OF THEM HAVE EYEBROWS. They both had permanently removed their brows and had them TATTOOED on.
I walked out without too much damage but I had some serious thoughts of horror about me walking down the aisle with tattooed eyebrows.
My eyebrows are strange - I've never seen any like them before. It looks like I have thick enough eyebrows, but it isn't b/c I have a multitude of hairs, it's because the ones I have are long!!! Normally this wouldn't pose a problem, except that when I wax them, I have to be very, very, very careful which ones I wax, because one wrong hair pulled leaves me with a giant hole in my eyebrow! Anyway....
ReplyDeleteMy tip to you is to try sugar waxing. It is WAY less painful that hot wax, as the sugar sticks only to the hairs, not the skin. Hot wax sticks to both. Also, sugar waxing has made my hairs grow in finer, blonder (I have dark hair, didn't know that was even possible), and less often. It's great!
My eyebrows are so light I have to pencil them in everyday. I feel for you. I understand that everything continues to grow. Maybe when you're a senior, you won't need a hat or sunglasses. You might have to protect yourself from people smacking you, thinking you have a spider on your forehead.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna put your link on my website. I think I've found a kindred spirit.
Polly
www.lazysillygirl.com
Jewish genes here too! I'd tell you my story, but you already told it perfectly. Except that my BFF since 3d grade does look JUST like Jen Connelly. Add THAT to the pile of neurosis and light it on fire. :-(
ReplyDeleteMy eyebrow pain is that they're normal on the the inner half, but once you get to the arch, there's practically nothing. I color them in with matte eyeshadow just so I can draw a line where my outer eyebrows *should* be.
ReplyDeleteAs for legs, I actually got laser hair removal, because it drives me CRAZY that my skin is so white and hair so dark that it always looks like I have stubble. The laser lady told me I was a perfect candidate--just like Snow White. So it's nice to know it's good for something. And now I only have to shave once a week or so. Totally worth all the time, money, and sensation of being snapped over and over with hot rubber bands.
Oh, Jen - I feel your pain. I've inherited my grandfather's eyebrows, or rather, the three incredibly long, curly eyebrow hairs that stick out smack dab in the middle. I get the trimming, and waxing, and plucking, blah blah. And to paraphrase the Bard, "If I pluck them, yes I bleed."
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'd be content if they'd stay above my eyes, and stop wandering down towards my chin. :(
I feel your pain. My eyebrows also must be plucked, trimmed and combed. Maybe I'll have them waxed. Certainly won't hurt.
ReplyDeleteSo.. no one's tried permanent laser hair removal? hm.
ReplyDeleteOh lordy...I'm with you, except I'm not Jewish, I'm Polish! All I can say is I get waxed every 2 weeks. It's the best 8bucks I've ever spent. Yes it hurts and turns red the first few times. However that passes quickly and no longer hurts or gets red. And as a bonus the hairs I have to pluck in between come out easier :) And.. yes, Sarah is the ideal of beauty. The happiest day of my life was in high school when some random person told me I look just like her :))))
ReplyDeleteI have no Jewish roots....in fact, I'm blond...but my eyebrows (or maybe I should say eyebrow) have to be plucked almost daily or else they try to fill in the middle and the arch, and the entire space between my eye lid and hair line. And, I to have to trim them up too. I always assumed my eye brows curled because I have curly hair, but I'm pretty sure if I let them grow long enough, they would form ringlets. You are not alone!
ReplyDeleteI get my eyebrows waxed and it hurts like the dickens! However, the beginning of my left eyebrow doesn't lie flat, so they always wax that off too! So I perpetually look like I'm raising an eyebrow.
ReplyDeleteMy eyebrows grow straight across my head. Think Bert from Sesame Street. Caterpillars in scoliosis braces. Even the waxer ladies have told me "gawd, you have no arch at all in these things!" And my German heritage makes them uber dark, long, and straight.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I also have walrus whiskers to deal with too. Those are fun as well.
Facial hair commiseration!
At least you don't have THIS guy's eyebrows: http://www.infomercial-hell.com/juiceman/
ReplyDeleteSounds like you just need a good professional waxer. I have unruly Italian eye brows. I get waxed once every 4-6 weeks. Once my estetician has shaped them, keeping the strays plucked is fairly easy, as I don't have to create the guideline. All that's left is brushing them straight up and trimming across the top to eliminate the long ones. I have found that brow gel brushed on helps keep them in place all day and a little bit of lighter colored brow powder fills in sparse spots.
ReplyDeleteUgh...you are most definitely NOT alone on this one!
ReplyDeleteMy eyebrows are like weeds... every time I try am make them look somewhat presentable they grow back twice as thick.
It very possibly is the Jewish roots, seeing as I have the same issue and am a quarter Jewish. Sigh, I am proud of my roots but man does my pride come at a cost!
I am still attempting to find a suitable cure for this malady. Hopefully I find one soon, if I do I will inform you immediately.
Jen, I understand your pain. My eyebrows always want to meet in the middle to BECOME ONE. Like a very unsexy combination robot. And I can not wear mascara on my lashes because I leave black streaks on my sunglasses. Basically, any hair I possess is extremely difficult to tame or pluck/shave/wax away. Oddly enough, my leg stopped growing a lot of hair over the spot I got my tattoo. I have seriously debated getting my legs covered in tats ever since.
ReplyDeleteApparently we must be related! I have the same overly zealous eyebrows and leg hair!
ReplyDeletePrickly women unite!
I have long brows. I, too, trim.
ReplyDeleteSometime before my BIL's wedding, I bought a "personal trimmer." You know, for those who like to just keep the overgrowth of the rainforest in check, rather than calling for complete and total deforestation.
So, before I used it to do anything, I looked over all the bits and attachments.
Hmmmm...a brow groomer! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Directions? WHO READS THESE?
Bzzzz. AAAAAACK! WHERE DID THE OUTER 1/3 OF MY BROW GO?
*looks at directions* Shit. That thing has a GUARD that goes on it? *digs in bag* *hangs head in shame*
Ooookay. Let's do the same thing to the other side, cause we're clearly gonna have to draw that shit in, and it needs to be symmetrical. Like I meant to do that.
Cue trip to Target, where I buy damn near every brow product made. The winners included:
Brow Stencils
Fill it in with brow powder
At the wedding, I had to sneak into the bathroom every morning before anyone saw me to powder in my brows. GOOD TIMES! Luckily, no one seemed to notice, cause, trust me, my MIL would have said something if she did.
I thread now. In fact, I need to go back cause the five o'clock shadow is marching from brows to lids as I type. Threading kiosks have popped up in a lot of the malls in the DC metro area. I think it hurts less than waxing, and you don't have big pink patches on your face after.
I have been told more than once that I have mountain man eyebrows, so do not fret. My brows grow down my eyelids and up my forehead and around to my temples.
ReplyDeleteSo my problem is slightly different but just as irritating...Nordic background so my "fuzz" is clear..but there is aallllloooottt of it. Fuzzy wuzzy wuz a bear..is my own personal jingle. And on top of that, sensitive skin. So my trick is lavender oil before and after "removal" otherwise i break out..the lavender keeps the redness down and seems to make the process go smoothier...also i take turns with a professional...One month i let them attach and the next month i do it myself...It all hurts, but i'd rather a little pain then being mistaken for one of my child's fuzzy toys. :)
ReplyDelete*looks up at other 170-ish comments*
ReplyDeleteWho knew that eyebrows were going to be such a popular subject?
My eyebrows are of the bushy variety and I pluck every day. I have a very expressive face and cannot hold a pokerface. People are really charmed by that for some reason.
I have convinced myself that waxing would take away that charm and my eyebrows are necessary to my personality. I have a Sampson complex.
Get those puppies laser’ed, It’s worth every penny to never have to pluck again!
ReplyDeleteYou must go to the nearest mall right now, and find the Indian Threading Kiosk, you will be a brand new woman. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteUntil they ask you if you want your lip done too, then you feel like a mongrol again. Believe me.
Ha ha, I'm blonde. I have no eyebrows or leg hair, and have not shaved under my arms since I was thirteen and thought everyone needed to. I guess there are advantages to being Viking spawn. Although, to be fair, if I don't wear any makeup I can be a ghost for Halloween.
ReplyDeleteI too suffer from OJES (Overly Jewish Eyebrow Syndrome) and only survive by a rigorous regime of alternated waxing and plucking. However, I have been known to be a BIT overzealous and end up looking a bit like Spock after a particularly trying day... or like that guy from LOTR who Jumps on his son's burning funeral pyre. Not a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI'm Iranian. Which means I have unruly hair everywhere! Thanks extrememly hairy ancestors.
ReplyDeleteI call my eyebrows my 'caterpillars'. My bf now knows what I mean when I say I'm gonna go get my 'caterpillars done'. I go to a fabulous cheap Indian salon once every week to two weeks and have them threaded. Only costs $3 and I don't have to worry about the 'oh just one more hair to make them even' which we all know leads to nothing good. Those Indian ladies sure know how to sculpt an eyebrow like nobody's business!!
Try it out!
Once I turned 35, I started growing some eyebrow hair that sticks straight out from my head. No turn to the left or right...STRAIGHT OUT.
ReplyDeleteI'm rocking caterpillars at the moment because I just don't have the oomph to get them waxed and tweezing would take forever.
Most embarrassing story: waxer telling me I had great willpower to let my brows grow out *so far* so the wax can grab them. It had only been 3 weeks since previous wax. :/
Not sure if it will help eyebrows, but it's the best shaving cream ever and doubles as a conditioner. Not recommending shaving the eyebrows, but try Athena's shaving cream (and since who knows the age group of readers, I won't name it by name) as a conditioner for eyebrows. It's a pretty amazing product and may help the curls?
ReplyDeleteGet 'em waxed, then pluck them as they grow back to keep the shape.
ReplyDeleteWhen I get mine waxed, they don't start growing back for a month or so... And it doesn't hurt at all... assuming wax doesn't drip onto your eyelid, which happened to me the very first time I got them waxed.
I used to pluck my eyebrows--started when I was in high school, or continue my life looking like Bert from Sesame Street.
ReplyDeleteThe day I found out you could actually PAY someone to do this for you, I started paying and never looked back. If you need a great EB gal, go to Salon Rache in the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell, CA and ask for Amii [with two 'i's]. She is gifted to the extreme.
I feel your pain! My eyebrows grow pretty long (and if my dad's are any indication, they would get waaaay out of control), so I also trim mine. Luckily, Sephora has this sweet eyebrow trimming tool that has a comb that hooks onto the little scissors so I don't end up with bald spots when I get a little overzealous. Which used to be frequently. And I also stole my mom's best pair of tweezers years ago, so I can pluck easily. It rocks.
ReplyDeletesometimes, when the light is just right, (or wrong) my eyebrows appear....gandalfian. (but without all the cool wizard powers. if i had the powers, i could probably tolerate the eyebrows.) *sigh*
ReplyDeleteYou're not alone!
ReplyDeleteI, too, HATE my eyebrows. I have no Jewish roots, and the Swedish in my certainly isn't responsible, but somewhere in there is a gene for outrageously dark hair that grows really, really fast. My eyebrows make me want to cry, and one day my 8-year-old tried to brush what she thought was a eyelash from my face and then said, "Oh, never mind, Mommy. It's just a small lady mustache." *Sob.*
So...I have laughed out load at many pf the previous comments, and actually found that I read them ALL! It's nice to know I'm not alone in the war on facial hair!
ReplyDeleteI have extremey WIDE eyebrows. Not length from left-to-right, but as in TALL, a full-inch from top to bottom, when left untamed. Chewbaca has nothin' on me!
The last time I got them waxed (like, 4 years ago!) the "professional" (ahem, yes, the correct use of the "" marks, because I'm not sure what bubble gum machine she got her license out of), was busily waxing away, when she slathered, yanked, then stopped and cocked her head to one side, shrugged, and said, "Oh well..." I knew something had gone terribly wrong when she did not offer me a mirror to look at them when she was done. I went to the front to pay, and imagine my horror when I found that, not only was two-thirds of my left brow MISSING COMPLETELY, but I was bleeding profusely as well!!
Since then, I've discovered the joys of the little brow razors. Quick and easy maintenance!
One morning I was trimming my brows with what I thought was my husband's mustache trimming scissors. He walked in and said, "I suppose I should tell you that I use those to clip my nose hairs..." EEEWWWW!!! Every since then, he has affectionately referred to me as "booger-brows" when he sees me grooming!
ReplyDeleteok, so I always blamed my German roots for the eyebrow fiasco. They're mostly ok, but I have to brush/comb them while they are still wet from the shower or they dry all crazy and drive me nuts all day. Occasionally I pluck the wild ones and way off base ones...but then I go months ignoring them pretending they are not growing and getting out of hand. I used to use the clear mascara on them, but it made them crispy and annoying.
ReplyDeleteI do feel your pain on the leg hair thing though. I'm with you...I have been joking for years about getting 5 o'clock shadow on my legs. Thick, dark,can't be stopped my hair removal creams, course hair.
While I can't commiserate about eyebrows in general, I did once decide to bleach my dark, dark brown brows one year for a Halloween costume. After nearly giving myself a chemical burn, my brows turned a lovely shade of pale orange. What I didn't realize was that they wouldn't all grow back in at the same rate; so for a few months I had calico eyebrows. But hey, at least they matched my cat!
ReplyDeleteAnother monobrow here. Inherited from my father.
ReplyDeleteI have to pluck every single day. If I don't do it daily, I look like I have not plucked them for weeks right the next day... sigh. I have been plucking since my early teens and fortunately do not feel any pain at all. On the contrary, I have a slight secret fear of being addicted to plucking them !! I start feeling very uncomfortable when I didn't get my daily fix - even on a day like today when I am not leaving the house and no-one will see me!
On the up side I seem to have gotten quite good at it. Last weekend my boyfriend of 10 months came into the bathroom while I was doing daily maintenance and he was quite surpised when I told him what I was doing and why :-)
And I will not even start with hairy problems on other parts of my body. I see it as the price I have to pay for having really nice, long, thick and strong hair growing the only place I want it to ;-)
I have an unusual eyebrow story. I got the Hairy Croatian Gene from my dad's side. (Can't go for more than one day without shaving or I also have cactus legs that scrape against the sheets which I can't STAND, partial unibrow, hairy toes and tops of feet that I also have to shave...you get the picture.) I started waxing them after I got out of college, and I'm glad I did. I don't wax them so much anymore--mostly just plucking.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, my husband and I have horses. In about 2000, our stallion (who is no longer a stud but now a dud) decided to be frisky one day as I was turning him out and he did a half buck and popped me in the eyebrow with a back foot. Split me open to the bone. If he had been trying to kick me, he'd have crushed my face.
Needless to say I was freaking out and bleeding like a stuck pig, so I had to be taken to the hospital. I was very lucky: the doctor on rotation in the ER was a plastic surgeon. He worked very carefully to sew me up. Problem was, the novocaine wore off as he was working because he was being so careful. I started to be able to feel it. He said he'd give me another shot, but I truly believe that novocaine is purposefully more painful than the actual procedure so that doctors can give you a little taste of what you'd be missing without it. So I said go ahead and work without it. Honestly, it wasn't that painful. However, I could feel the needle each time it was passed through the wound. At one point I said outloud:
"Man, it feels like you're sticking a needle in me...which...I guess...you...are."
The doctor was laughing so hard he had to stop working on me.
So now I have a small scar but my eyebrow does peak up a little bit in the middle. It's enough to have to pluck it or I'll look like a permanent version of Mr. Spock's Did You Really Just Say That? look.
Of course we all want to look like Sarah from Labyrinth. I was just happy I had long brown hair and blue eyes like her. I got compared to her a lot. And Alanis Morissette...I still can't figure that one out.
Ironically, the word verification for me right now is "curses"...
Growing up my mom always told me I have Brooke Shields eyebrows. Yay!
ReplyDeleteI've just had to conservatively pluck them to get a good shape. I resigned myself, early on, to the fact I'm not going to have those thin eyebrows. Which I'm glad for. My grandma plucked her brows into oblivion--she draws hers on now.
I was never a fan of those paper thin brows either! They can give you a funny look on your face.
I've heard using lotion or maybe vaseline on your brows can keep them from being unruly.
Just be glad that thick eyebrows are coming back into fashion!
So, someone else may have already made a comment similar to this one, but I just don't have the time to read all 188 comments.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I've always heard (and believed because of my own personal hairy experiences) that the more you cut/trim/shave your hair, the faster it grows back. It may be really difficult in the beginning, but if you stop trimming them for a while, the growth may slow down. Hope this helps.
Oh yeah, and this may make you feel better...in addition to routine plucking of my brows, I also have to pluck random stray "whiskers" (as my mother affectionately refers to them) from my chin and jaw line about once a month. Yuck!!
While I don't have an eyebrow story, I can sympathize with shaking your head over past hair choices. When I first started to grow facial hair, I decided to grow a moustache. In college, I decided I could pull off the full beard look. I couldn't.
ReplyDeleteI decieved myself into thinking I looked good despite what everyone told me. So what if my hair was brown, my moustache blonde and my beard red? So what if it made me look like I was 30 (while in college)? I had a beard and so I was happy.
Then, one day, I decided that I needed to shave it off. I felt like a farmer sheering a sheep. It was a great decision, though. Especially because my wife hates facial hair and I shudder to think what our first meeting would have been like had I shown up with that beard/moustache combo!
I have the same problem!
ReplyDeleteFirst (and often), I tweeze the errant hairs. Second, I’ll comb them down with a clean mascara brush and trim the hairs that are too long. Finally, I use a clear mascara and gel them into place so they don’t get to go all over the place, which they often try to do.
Sheesh! Is there a single hair on a woman’s body that isn’t attended to??
I have fairly blonde eyebrows, but they are pretty healthy, so I wax them and then I hide the results in bangs that completely cover the whole area.I guess I got fine body hair from my Choctaw Grandma.
ReplyDeleteWhilst I don't have overly thick eyebrows I have recently gained a clump of white hairs (which given I'm 28 just isn't fair) right in the middle of my left eyebrow. For some reason these white hairs are resistant to eyebrow dye, makeup, anything making me permanently look like I've done a bad pluck and given myself a hole in my eyebrow
ReplyDeleteOmg so I skipped all the comments because I'm excited. I TOO have awful eyebrows! I got them from my dad. MY DAD. My mom's eyebrows are awesome, but do I get them? OF COURSE NOT. My dad says it's the Italian in us that makes them bushy.
ReplyDeleteI get them waxes because plucking is too painful and there's too much hair. Which is ALSO why I did NOT like threading. The people who like threading must not have as much hair as I do because ow ow ow ow ow!
I get them waxed about every 2 months or so. So I have this horrible "growing out" period so I get them all when they get waxed. If I go too early, a SECOND WAVE of hair will come up a couple of weeks after the waxing. Sigh.
I'm going to get them waxed next week and I am SO EXCITED because they're getting kind of embarrassing. Oh I also have to trim...why are the hairs so LONG?
So yes. No advice. But I'm glad we could bond over this.
I agree that Sarah from labyrinth is the ultimate model goal for me most the time, I always thought she was amazingly gorgeous and jealous of her and bowie together.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I decided to get my IRISH eyebrows waxed I just went to the nearest salon and to cut this story short by time the very nice Asian lady was done they we're so thin they LOOKED drawn on and around them was very very red for two whole days and trying to use cover up to lessen the redness just made then get blotchy, purple, and cause little pimples it was a horrible nightmare. Needless to say I didn't leave my house and now when I get them waxed it by a more reputable salon. ^.^
I not only have bushy eyebrows but the Italian unibrow as well. In my experience plucking not only hurts but takes forever, so I finally opted for waxing.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to find not only did it not hurt as much as I expected but it was cheep ($5) and so much faster to get done. I would never try and wax myself. I would never get it right, but for 5 bucks every 6-8 weeks, this I can afford.