Facing the Facts

Well, today I have had to own up to the cold hard truth: I have wimpy eyebrows.

As I've said again and again I have really light blond eyebrows and I have been filling them in with powder or pencil since I was about 14 years old. That was around the time I read The Shell Seekers and one of the main characters in that book gets her eyelashes and brows tinted (she couldn't wear mascara because if she could we would not have had this big dramatic literary moment) and is instantly more attractive and the hot gardener falls in love with her and suddenly her whole life is changed. Clearly this had a MAJOR impact on me as I still remember it 15 years later. (Also, besides your mouth your brows are the most expressive part of your face so they should be fairly well defined.) So today I bit the bullet. I bopped over the Sally Beauty Supply and picked up a box of eyebrow tint. I figured since I won't be back at work for a few days I would have time to exfoliate any massive screwups from my skin and figure out how to cover up the brows if it all turned out really bad.

So, the hardest part was covering the skin surrounding my brows with Vaseline. I kept running it into my brow hair and I'd have to wash it all off and start over. I put on the first step of the process, waited a few minutes, and put part 2 on with an old mascara wand. Yes, it sort of ran and stained my skin (but the stain remover worked great, even though it burns a touch if you're sloppy like me, and even though I have a sneaking suspicion it might be straight bleach in a little tiny jar). Then I washed it off and saw... nothing. 3 hairs were a little darker and that was about it.

Take 2: I tried again (the box said that was ok). But this time I left off the Vaseline, used q-tips instead of the brush, hauled out my magnifying mirror, and moved the operation to the living room where there is much better light. I'll keep doing all that in the future. I waited a few minutes, and washed everything off. A little stain remover action with the q-tips again and... I have eyebrows.

HOWEVER, I do not have full lush fabulous brows that were just waiting to be discovered with the application of a tint. And I was kind of hoping I would get done and look like Brooke Shields. Oh well. They still look pretty good. The color is a nice medium brown that doesn't look funny with my hair color, as in not too red or yellow, just completely natural. I will probably still use a little brow pencil just because I am a creature of habit, but it will be nice to know that when I rub my face at the end of the day my eyebrows won't come off on my hand. I'll hold off on tweezing for a while so there is more to color the next time around. I got a huge box of 40 applications and these babies will need to be touched up every 2 or 3 weeks, but I think it's worth it.

As for my lashes, I'm chicken. I'm not touching them. With my luck I'd go blind out of pure vanity. How embarrassing would that be?!