This article was written for Annabel & Grace, which is now part of Rest Less.
Your eyebrows frame and lift your features. When they are perfectly suited to your face they are the ultimate anti-ageing tool. They not only define the face and emphasise the eyes, but also distract from jowls, making you look healthier and well-groomed.
However, if you are like me and couldn’t help over-plucking into a very thin line way back in the 80’s, the result is that once the hair has been removed over a period of time, it often refuses to grow back. Ageing and the menopause only make matters worse, causing brows to thin as levels of female hormone oestrogen drop.
Because of the fashion for ‘Cara Delevingne’ voluptuous eyebrows, the beauty market has been flooded with products to address this issue. Some good and some bad. The huge variety of tools from eyebrow pencils, powders, gels, mascara-like wands, brow stencils, together with all the colour variations to choose from, can be rather confusing.
Everyone has their own preferred method of application that they find easier. Grace and I have chosen semi-permanent eyebrow make-up. This is a painless technique (anaesthetic cream is applied on the brow area beforehand), which allows pigment to be implanted into the dermal layer of the skin using incredibly fine and accurate probes. Similar to tattooing, but it doesn’t penetrate as deeply into the skin, hence ‘semi-permanent’. The equipment and pigments have been developed specifically for this use, and in the hands of an excellent and recommended technician (essential!), will be able to subtly define your brows with amazingly realistic results – it’s as if each hair has been painstakingly drawn on. I now have a superb shape and I can wake up and not worry about pencilling my eyebrows every morning or tinting every few weeks.
My mother always had one brow significantly higher than the other, which my superb ‘Eyebrow Lady’ (as I call her) skilfully rectified during her first appointment. Results can last years, but I have mine re-done every 2.5/3 years at a cost of around £400 (including a follow up appointment 4-6 weeks later). This may seem a huge sum of money, but at an average of £12-£20 for eyebrow tinting (depending on your location), this can add up over the years to a similar financial outlay, if not more. You can liken it to waxing versus laser treatment for body hair I suppose.
I can only stress again that it is paramount to go to a professional whom you have been recommended to – and presumably admired their work on someone’s eyebrows. It is not all about shape, but also the equipment and the colour selection of the pigment.
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