Raising an Eyebrow
“Never cared for what they say. Never cared for games they play. Never cared for what they do. Never cared for what they know.” - Nothing Else Matters, Metallica
There is a game
within in the game
where eyebrows warrant the attention
of major news outlets, reporters, drag queens,
actors, social media influencers,
models, stylists, plastic surgeons,
and those whose muse is hairless brows,
those on a mission to transform depilated canvases
into expressions of indignation,
incredulity, arched and bruised disdain,
the ferocious, be-glittered frowns
of the unseen screaming for attention. - J.Ball
According to The NY Times, the latest beauty craze is eyebrow shaving. The concept wasn’t even on my radar until this article arrived in my news feed: Why More People Are Shaving Their Eyebrows — And How to Do It Yourself. The accompanying images immediately transported me back to the The Hunger Games where the denizens of the Capitol - led by a tyrannical dictator named President Snow - reigned over and exploited those living in the Districts outside the Capitol.
President Snow and his cohorts were willing to use any means and go to any extremes to stay in power, including violence, threats of nuclear war, and a yearly battle to the death between children from the Districts. But their most successful tool was psychological manipulation. Surrounded by opulence and encouraged by state controlled media to see themselves as superior, the Capitol’s citizens were self-absorbed and obsessed with food, fashion, and body alteration. They routinely underwent plastic surgery, pierced, tattooed, and painted their skins, replaced body hair with wigs, fake lashes and fake eyebrows, and tiny glittering implants (see video above), and donned clothing that can only be described as non-functional.
If all of the above hits a little too close to home (both historically and in terms of events unfolding today) I’m not surprised. But I’m not suggesting that those who choose to shave their eyebrows for fashionable and/or artistic purposes are shallow and self-centered. Still, I have to ask. How times are we going to fall for this nonsense - this belief that outward appearance determines our worth? When will we look at the beauty, fashion, plastic surgery, exercise, and diet industries and realize we’re being hoodwinked? What constitutes beauty is as mecurial as the weather and changes whenever profits need a boost.
Once I got over the shock of being told to remove hair from another part of my body, I got out The List. I started The List back in 1982 when I was TAing a Women’s Studies class called, “The Popular Image of Women in America.” We had women in the class who literally could not leave their homes without applying make-up. They felt exposed, vulnerable, and unattractive. This stunned me. I was swimming twice a day and had no time to do anything but shower, throw on dry clothes, and run to class. I really couldn’t imagine trying to find the money or time to purchase and put on make-up. But for certain women in the class, make-up was part of their identity. So I started asking them to tell me what products they used and why, and the process they went through to apply them.
Out of this informal study came The List. It contains a checklist of products and procedures (like shaving, plucking eyebrows, setting hair, painting nails, etc.) along with the frequency, time of day, and order they are to be applied. The List has continued to grow in length and complexity as I’ve aged and more and more causes for alarm (wrinkles, sags and bags, dry skin, thin skin, thin hair, graying hair, spider veins, lip lines, smile lines, sun spots, and a whole host of other what nots) appear and need to be addressed. Looking at it now I have to laugh. I simply don’t know how any dedicated beauty maven can find the time to add shaving and applying fake eyebrows to their daily routine. Nuff said.
P.S. I’d love to hear what you all think about shaving eyebrows and your relationship to make-up. HUGS!
I also cheerfully accept one-time donations. Just click on the donate button below to be taken to my PayPal page. Thank you!
I was surprised and taken aback this Christmas to see that my 12 year old granddaughter received a LOT of makeup-like products-- a package of a dozen different color lip glosses, tubes of foundation, powder, an EYELASH CURLER fergawdsakes, mascara (though clear)... and her 5-yr-old sister got a faux makeup kit. They set about putting it all into play. Seriously, I was stunned. When she asked me I said I didn’t use makeup except for some lip gloss for special occasions, and used to use stuff on my eyes more often but got out of the habit a long time ago. I also don’t color my hair.
I said, “Women use makeup so they can have skin that looks like ... yours,” but I’m not sure she got the idea. She said she needed it because she had zits, gesturing to her forehead where, upon very close inspection, there were a few to be seen. I said that nobody will see those anyway, and immediately regretted it, because I remembered how very self conscious adolescents are about this even when they’re almost invisible to everybody else. Oh well.
Both girls are on swim teams and loving it, in the pool two or three hours six days a week and competing above their ages because they’re good. Maybe a lot of time in chlorinated/bromated pools makes a difference. I swam almost exclusively in native salt water and only in summer, so I have no basis for comparison there,
I realize that I was lucky having almost no pimples when I was an adolescent; my mother, brought up in a mining town and homeschooled until high school because the nearest school was many hard miles away, never wore any makeup except lipstick for dress up occasions. Her mother had beautiful skin into her eighties. And now, of course, I have old lady skin, with the incipient age spots and familial red things my father and his mother grew, though fewer wrinkles (she smoked heavily all her life and had a face like a Goodyear tire...and I would give a lot to see that beloved face again). I see my skin in the pictures of the old ladies on that side of the family ... and oddly, though I have gotten my whiskers lasered away, I don’t mind at all.
I was never a fan of makeup. During my corporate career I considered makeup to be part of my work outfit. I hated that I had to remember to take it off at the end of the day when I was exhausted - I put cotton and makeup remover on my night table so that I could take it off after lying down in bed, because that was invariably when I'd remember that I needed to take it off...
I remember having an interesting conversation with an older French woman who asked me if I had self-esteem issues because I never wore makeup. She saw wearing makeup as a gift of beauty to herself... I'm not sure if it was really that, or French society female peer pressure to always "look one's best" when going out in the world.
I've never done anything to my eyebrows, what a crazy idea to shave them off!
I did wax my legs & bikini area as a teenager & young adult, the motivation being that it decreased regrowth and took a long time to grow back. I don't do any of that anymore!
I'm also very fortunate to have nice skin with very few pimples during adolescence. Age spots have now appeared & I don't plan on doing anything in particular about that, except to use sunscreen.
The one thing that I do pluck out are the post-menopausal hairs growing out of my nose...