When I was young, I got my eyebrows waxed and they came back shitty. Since that fateful one-and-only time waxing, I’ve always been kind of disappointed with my eyebrows and their insolent refusal to grow–especially the left one because depending on how the hairs lay, it occasionally looks like I have a bald spot there. And not a cool, post-mugging eyebrow bald spot like Spike. No, just a regular old one, the kind that distracts you when you catch it in a mirror.
The first lesson that should be learned form this is don’t start waxing your kid’s eyebrows too young. Don’t. I don’t care how alienated they feel in school, it’s important to remind yourself that 1) kids feel alienated by fucking everything in school, 2) thick eyebrows look awesome (especially on girls) and 3) if your kid ever decides of her own volition that she really, really needs to take them down a size and/or sculpt, not waxing too early will mean she has something substantive to work with.
(Sidenote: I really can’t emphasize enough how great thick eyebrows look and if you need more reminding, consider Hilary Rhoda, Jennifer Connelly, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields, etc).
So you’re in my situation and your eyebrows are a little sparse. Not only that, they’re sparse and if they’re not in exactly the right place, they can look pretty wonky. For this, I’ve historically padded them out with a simple dark brown pencil in addition to a tinted gel that will hold them in place, like Anastasia here (who didn’t finance this mention in any way nor have I ever gotten a sample from them, every tube of this stuff I’ve used I have purchased myself):
I read somewhere that Pat McGrath–probably the greatest makeup artist in history–said you should always double up on brow colors to “add dimension.” So I use a brow gel (in “brunette“) that’s slightly lighter than my natural brow color and kind of feather it all around, but I’ll also do some contour lines with a darker pencil (my brows are actually a lot darker than my hair, though, so I have to be careful about making them appear any darker). If you ever see me out at Fashion Week or something, though, don’t scrutinize my eyebrows, okay?
Like I said, my coloring system has worked well for years. But one night I was staying awake late, lost in some sort of Wikipedia k-hole. I think I was researching Latisse because I wanted to know if it can really change the color of your eyes without warning. Not that I’m interested in using Latisse, mostly just, “Holy shit, that would be terrible!” Anyway, I got sucked into a spiral of beauty forums and before I knew it, I’d come across a discussion about the benefits of putting Rogaine on your eyebrows.
It made sense. Rogaine makes your head hair grow, but probably not in the lush, Uncle Jesse way that some bald guys are hoping. I’d even seen some Rogaine before and after photos where the after reminded me of eyebrow hairs. I read through the whole thread and then figured I’d give it a shot.
And so…
