Confessions of the Brow

My mom took me for my first eyebrow wax when I was fourteen. The technician told me that if I started plucking now (1992), in ten years, they wouldn’t grow back. I plucked twice a day for years. I checked again in 2002. They were still growing back.
My mom also said I’d appreciate my brows someday. I disagreed.
In high school, Lupe and friends cornered me after school and tried to make me confess to drawing in my eyebrows. “Only Mexican girls have eyebrows like that,” she said. “Maybe I’m Mexican?” I replied.
I started noticing everyone’s eyebrows, and when that happened, I realized they are the best accessory we have.
Yesterday, after 24 years of plucking, I bought some eyebrow oil to help my eyebrows grow. My fourteen year old self can-not-believe-it. “All of my work,” she screamed. My threading guru tells me I can never pluck again. We’ll see.
For ages, I thought I was the only one who had constructed my sense of self around (my perception of) my eyebrows. Earlier this year, I found out I am not. A gag gift, turned most perfect gift ever, from a friend found my teenage self her twin sister. Here is the love letter I sent to the author. I thought we could start an eyebrow therapy group. (Unabrow: Misadventures of a Late Bloomer is hilarious.)

Dear Una, My friend in Canada took a photo of UnaBrow and posted it on my Facebook page as an ode to what I looked like as a child. She didn’t actually know me as a child, but the tales of my eyebrows are things of legend. The post and the teasing that ensued, as she rallied my family into the cause, brought back the eyebrow angst of my formative years. She was kind enough, and felt sufficiently bad enough about the teasing, to buy a copy and posted it to me in the UK. Thank you for the hilarious read. Through the tales of eyebrows (and mothers who thought them beautiful), of running track, and getting through adolescence (and life now) through random pop star daydreams, I started to wonder if you managed a bit of identity theft. Or perhaps the lives of those with hearty eyebrows are destined to be similar. The morning I finished the book, aptly ending on parenthood and marriage, I was up early due to a noisy departure by my husband for work. Using a hands-free neck light (a neck hug, as the Google informed me) to read the book in the pre-dawn darkness, I suppressed my laughter so much – the tootsie roll – that tears ran down my cheeks and I just hoped that the bat-ears on my three year old couldn’t hear my snortles. I don’t know if you’ve come across the book, Eleanor’s Eyebrows, in your new role as mother. If not, it’s a great ode to eyebrows and I wish I had it 30 years ago. Thanks for writing a book that resonated so well. All the best, Michele

Last night, I told my husband, after years of plucking, I was going to buy a brow pencil so that I could have Kim Kardashian brows. He looked at me, “After a decade together, I never thought I’d say to you, do not try to be like the Kardashians.”
#eyebrowenvy #onfleek

Photo Credit: nicolee_camacho via Compfight cc

Pin It on Pinterest