Has anyone noticed that there is a new mark of the sophisticate among celebrity classes? A subtle sign that an individual wishes to be taken seriously by the public and their fellow professionals? You may raise your eyebrows but this brings me on to exactly what I am going to talk about: The rise of the perfectly groomed eyebrow. Cheryl Cole makes an exemplary case study for the phenomenon. Cast your mind back to Chezza’s Pop Stars the Rivals auditions and you may be shocked to recall the sorry state that her now buxom brows were in. Ms Cole’s ascendancy may have involved her shedding a few pounds from her waist but her brows have undoubtedly gained weight. Wind forward a few years and history can be seen repeating itself in the in the face of her X-factor successor. Like Cheryl, Tulisa’s transformation from dubious teenage talent to national treasure has coincided with her brows taking on lustrous new proportions. That fact that both women swapped their Lycra for Lacroix is of course important but I would argue that their brow-volution has been equally, if not more, influential in reforming their public imag.
A carefully conceived eyebrow can cause dramatic facial alteration, opening up the eye and creating a sense of symmetry and proportion. Nevertheless, I believe that like clothing, make-up, perfume etc. a brow has more than purely aesthetic significance.
Creatively employ a touch of amateur psychology and any number of implications can be read from the thickness, shape and colour of a lady’s brow. Over-plucked and crudely pencilled on brows, for example, I consider indicative of a petulant, adolescent character. This is not a generalisation snatched from mid-air but rather a stereotype reinforced throughout my school career. Hit teenage-dom and girls seem to become beholders of an all encompassing fear of the mono-brow. Visit any high school in the land and the evidence of this is starkly apparent. Although one pleasant upshot is that the mono-brow is on the verge of extinction, now girls all too frequently seem to sway the other way. The barely-there-brow has reached such prevalence amongst teenage girls that, by mere association, I assume any female sporting the look is characteristically a mouthy gob-shite.
Considering their ... ahem, past behaviour it is unsurprising that Cheryl and Tulisa have employed every trick in the book to rid their faces of such connotations. Their prominent yet beautifully groomed brows provide the exact antithesis to the aforementioned look and therefore indicate a very different character. For example, one might interpret the prominence of their brows as a sign of the ladies’ confidence in themselves and their own opinions. Their thickness could be read as a sign of maturity and sensitivity etc.
You may laugh and say that I am reading far too much into the matter, that we cannot base our perception of a person’s character on the set of their brow. Nevertheless with such persuasive evidence to the contrary can you really be sure? If I have planted a seed of doubt in your mind, a small fear that an unflattering comment may be self-inscribed on your forehead, read on and rectify...
10 Steps to the perfect brows:
1. Where to start: Imagine two parallel lines, one each side of your nose extending down through each nostril. The intersection between your brows and these lines is where they should actually start. If stray hairs are making their way into the central reservation, get rid of them.
2. The arch: Now get a ruler. Place it horizontally across your face so that one corner is on the tip of your nose and the edge runs through your eye and brow. Position the ruler so that the edge runs through the outside iris. Where it meets your brow is where the highest part of the arch should fall.
3. The arch part 2: Now use your discretion. You can manipulate nature but don’t fight it. If your arch falls a little nearer to the eye, say up to above the pupil, or a little further out (the outside edge of the iris) this is ok. Just don’t move out this zone.
4. Where to finish: The main thing to bare in mind here is that you should never finish higher than you start. Imagine a horizontal line running across your forehead, grazing the starting points of your brows. Their ends should also reach this line. In fact they can go slightly below it, just as long as they’re not trailing into temple territory.
5. Shaping: Now you’ve found the start, middle and finish points of your brows, all there is to do is shape them. The best way to do this is to take a white eye-liner and draw on the shape you want to achieve. Remember they should start thicker and elegantly taper off towards the finish point.
6. Tweezing: Get a decent pair of slanted tweezers and make sure you’ve got good light and a clean mirror. Really you should use a magnifying mirror but I do understand if you, like me, find this too distressing. Now you can start tweezing the pencilled hairs, gripping them firmly and as close to the root as possible. DON’T get too radical too soon. You’ll see why next...
7. Trimming: Before you start getting all pluck-happy with the long hairs take stock and trim. Use a brow brush to brush the hairs upwards. Then, using a pair of nail scissors, trim the long hairs that extend beyond the upper line of the brow.
8. Perfecting: If more tweezing still needs to be done then go ahead but by taking time out to trim you should have created a shapely brow without running the risk of bald spots.
9. Colouring: Your brows are now fully shaped! Woop Woop! They do however probably still need a little perfecting. This can be done using brow powder, a brow pencil or brow wax.
- Brow wax: I am a massive fan of Benefit’s brow wax, but as this is rather over budget, I really shouldn’t be endorsing it.
- Brow powder: is hard to come by but a matte eye-shadow the colour or slightly darker than your natural brow colour is just as good. Apply it with a slanted brush and go sparingly at first and then build the colour to a desired intensity.
- Brow pencil: Be cautious with this. After all your hard work with the shaping you don’t want to regress to the drawn on look due to heavy handedness.
10. Voila! By now you should have perfect brows. All you need to do now is ensure that they stay that way. There are brow mascaras on the market but they’re quite costly and a bit of good old-fashioned hairspray does the job just as well. Spritz it onto your brow brush and then use this to brush your brows into the perfect shape. Again go gently. Helmet hair is bad enough but immobile brows are both uncomfortable and disturbing to others. 