I’m going to recount a short conversation I had with my boyfriend this weekend. He claims he didn’t say it but I am stating here for the record that he did. I didn’t mind him saying it, he tells me how beautiful I am all the time, it’s fine, but he did say it. Fact.
It went something like this:
Him: “What have you done to your eyebrows?”
Me: “Nothing. What do you mean?”
Him (laughing): “Yes, you have! What have you done? They look weird?”
Me (paranoid): “Nothing!!”
Him (looking more closely): “Oh, maybe you haven’t, I think it’s just that they’re going grey.”
Yes, yes they are. To match my hair, my eyebrows are going grey. To make the process even more fun, the grey ones are often wiry, sticking directly out of my face. A year from now and I will look like one of those old professors whose bushy white eyebrows make him look permanently startled.
I mention it on Twitter and apparently I’m not the only women to suffer such an eyebrow affliction.
“It’s weird how you just go from normal eyebrows to overnight Denis Healey,” says Joanne Mallon, “I have a whole suite of eyebrow accessories now.”
Eyebrow accessories??
“I had to start by drawing them back on,” she goes on, “then plucking the rampant excessive fronds. It’s a daily chore now.”
A daily chore??
It was bad enough that the hairs on my upper lip started crowding for attention on basically my 30th birthday, but a daily eyebrow maintenance routine? I just don’t have the time or the energy for it.
Is this it now? Do I need to take a trip to Optical Express to pick out glasses that cover my eyebrows? Is it just a big spiral down into my twilight years, my middle thickening, eyesight failing, skin drying out? (Actually I don’t mind that bit, it might be nice to be rid of the constant battle against nose grease.)
Do you struggle to tame your eyebrows? Is a daily regime inevitable?
I’d LIKE to say I feel your grey eyebrow pain, but I fear mine may be worse. While my head hair is going grey (that’s OK, flamingo pink hair dye covers it up perfectly), my (brown) eyebrows are sprouting strange, long ginger hairs. Like you say, I don’t even notice until they’re 3 inches long!
I feel I need to explain my eyebrow situation more. Before I was 40 I don\’t think I was even aware that I had eyebrows on my face. They were just there and I did nothing to them. I never thought I needed to since I wear glasses most of the time and they are pretty hidden.
But then, after 40, as many people will confirm, they just go bazinga. Even though I have very few grey hairs on my head, I now have tons of giant white eyebrow hairs growing at right angles off my face. Plus at some point a make up artist did me over and pointed out the difference drawing on some eyebrows can make.
So now, as I said, I have lots of stuff to deal with the polar bear eyebrow problem, or at least get me looking normal.If you are exploring such things, the Barry M eyebrow kit is a good buy since it has all you need in one place. (Benefit also do a more spendy version of the same thing). And since I am into gadgets and Korean beauty products, I really like the Missha Auto Eyebrow Styler which is easier than it looks to use.
Bet you wish you’d never asked now
Yug yes, it’s not the colour that gets me but the completely different texture business!
As Michael Jackson once sang, you are not alone … I am here with you. Both on the long hair and grey hair front. But at least I don’t have a boyfriend to point them out! :)
It could be worse. You could wash said lip balms that were forgotten in jeans and sweatshirt pockets, resulting in waxy residue on an entire load of clothes. I do this no less than a dozen times a year resulting in a lot of hand scrubbing afterwards.