Here’s a question for you – ‘Can eyebrow maintenance really, truly be pain-free?‘. Having tried most methods of extracting those pesky hairs I feel like I’m pretty qualified to answer this question and I guess my response would be no – personally for me, there’s always a bit of eyewatering involved – but there are varying levels depending on whether I need to grab a tissue to mop up my tears or not…
My first experience with eyebrow maintenance came when I was about 10 and upon discovering that I had what was termed ‘a severe wolf-like monobrow’ I decided that the best way to tackle this was to hack at my hairs with nail scissors. In the dark. And sure enough I woke up looking like I had had a fight with nail scissors in the dark. Nice one Anna. It was the 90’s and luckily I could attribute my lack of eyebrows to a dodgy experience with some body glitter, but it took months for them to grow-out to their original fullness and though on that occasion the maintenance was technically pain-free, the emotional scarring of my Mum having to fill in my sparse brows with black kohl eyeliner because that’s all she had was deep.
Soon after this I discovered my Mum’s tweezers and the decade of ultra-thin, one-hair-thick brows ensued. Now this method isn’t the most painful of all, but there’s still a bit of ‘ouch’ involved, especially on those fleshy areas towards the outer corners and nearer the lids. It’s still the method I use now in-between trips to the threader and thanks to the Tweezerman Tweezers (the best darn tweezers in the business, I’ve got every friend and family member onto these now), the process is easier and more efficient than ever. Those things are sharp so you’re way less likely to attempt to pluck a huge chunk of skin along with your desired hair. *shudders*
Next I tried waxing. It was years and years ago at the Benefit Brow Bar – I’m sure there’s a post about it nestled round these parts somewhere. In I went with my slightly re-grown, but hugely out of shape brows and came out with a much thinner, but more definer shape and pain-wise I don’t remember it being too horrendous. In fact I don’t remember it being painful at all. There wasn’t too much redness either and the only downside was that I was massively into fake tan at the time and the waxing pulled off my colour on the applied areas which was an interesting look to say the least.
More recently I gave threading a go and I have to say I’m converted. I now upkeep my brows using a combination of threading every month or two and then plucking in-between because my hairs grow back so damn fast. The threading just helps to keep the shape. The first time I tried it I’d only plucked my eyebrows two days or so before so there wasn’t much ‘extra’ to be removed, however since then each time I’ve returned I’ve grown-out my brows especially for the occasion and that’s where things get a little painful. Not painful per se, but more an uncomfortable ‘When is this going to be over because my nose is starting to run?‘ feeling. Last time I’d left my brows for weeks and the lady may have had to hand me a tissue. But for the precise lines and symmetrical brows (finally! It’s been years in the making), I’ll take that over my werewolf monobrow any day…
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