A dear friend of mine send me a really great article about eyebrows throughout the ages, and it made me think about the concept of eyebrows and how strange they are. I mean they are just two thin lines of hair above your eye lids, yet we would look like aliens without them. It is always all about your eyes, your lips, a beauty mark … even your eye lashes. I’ve never once heard a guy utter, “yo dude, look at them brows … I gotta get me some of that.”

I tell everyone that my eyebrows have a mind of their own, because they do. People forget, and actually I sometimes forget too, that my hair is naturally ridiculously curly … henceforth my eyebrows are curly, making them extremely temperamental. Weird, right? If I go too long without getting them waxed, I will wake up with bed head AND bed brows … how heinous is that?

Yes, so I suppose I was in the 6th grade when it got to the point of me needing to get my eyebrows waxed for the first time. Did I? Nope. I let them grow to the point of freakdom until I think the beginning of the 8th grade. My sister would beg me to get them waxed … even my hair dresser would plead with me to let one of her friends in the salon do them because they were such a hot, disastrous mess. I didn’t have a unibrow or anything, but I did have like a wall of thick, long hair above my lids. My reasoning for not wanting to get them waxed was me being afraid that I would look totally different and people would actually give me the type of attention that made a wallflower like myself want to wilt. And quite frankly, I was terrified that it was going to hurt. I mean hot wax ripping hair off your face? As a 13-year-old girl, it sounded like slow torture that I wanted nothing to do with.

My Nana was probably the only one who was on my side. She thought my eyebrows were reminiscent of Brooke Shields (a hot mess 13-year-old , less model-ly version of Brooke Shields perhaps), and since I was so tall like her she didn’t want me to fiddle with them. “Get the girl braces, but don’t touch those eyebrows,” she would say. But by the end of 7th grade I had made friends, felt a little more confident, starting liking boys … a.k.a. starting giving a shit about my appearance. So one day I secretly took a tweezer to my brows and took care of business myself before 8th grade started. I don’t remember how they came out, all I know is that they had shape for once and my mom quietly asked me if I had done something to my face, and I awkwardly said, “NO, WHY?!” I was a freak, what can I say.

Now I’m that girl who pays $12 to get her eyebrows done by a professional at a fancy salon. It’s not because I’m a snob, it is because no one really knows how to deal with my brows properly because they are so wild. Only a true professional knows tricks like rubbing conditioner on curly brows to make them straighter and less insane (a fun tip from me to you). If I go to a hole in the wall nail salon, they will just make them pencil thin and call it a day. But always, before laying down on the table, I preface the visit by saying, “they are crazed, beware,” regardless of where I go.

I now find getting my eyebrows waxed relaxing. You lay down in this spa-esque room with relaxing music, they put the hot wax on, rip it off (ouch), shape them up, cut them a little, rub fabulous cream over them, which sometimes entails a little temple massage (heaven) and boom you are done. Okay maybe I’m just in it for the temple massage. As long as they don’t come near me with a tweezer, than we are good. Unless I’m doing it and can take breaks and curse freely … I want nothing to do with it. It feel like little needles jabbing at you and you can’t stop it. Awful, awful, awful.

I’ve never tried eyebrow threading or laser hair removal, I just do good ol’ fashion waxing. I’ve recently been keeping my brows on the thicker side. I’m just over the pencil thin looking brows. Obviously I’m not going for a Bert and Ernie look, but just a little more luscious looking, ya know? Thicker eyebrows are definitely in vogue, but then again Lady Gaga has bleached eyebrows that you can barely see … so perhaps anything is fair game.

I’ve come along way from the girl with the wall of eyebrows … which reminds me, I need to make a waxing appointment ASAP!