comes calling
By Mariel Howsepian West Dressed
It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I realized I was in desperate need of tweezing. How had I never noticed that my eyebrows were like caterpillars? I was well aware that every other part of me could be fixed with a product, service, or surgery.
In fourth grade, I understood that I had ape legs and needed to shave, or depilate, or shave because depilatories smelled gross, or spend my allowance on one of those battery operated thingies that yanked the hair out by the root, or shave because the battery operated thingy wasn’t as fun and easy to use as the women in the commercial made it seem.
Also by fourth grade, I understood that I needed layered hair and a spiral perm.
In middle school, I decided that when I grew up, I was going to buy myself a less ethnic nose. (I was also going to be a marine biologist, the single mother of adopted children, and have a library with a ladder on a track so that I could slide from one side of the Dewey Decimal System to the other.) Maybe that same year, I saw a news story about a medical procedure in which a doctor broke both of a child’s legs to make him taller. At the time, I was 4’10”. I imagined my Franken-self, with 10 inch steel rods inserted into both of my legs to make me 5’8” and tall enough to runway model.
With the price of leg-lengthening surgery at $75,000, $35 for a home eyebrow makeover kit seems like a bargain. That is until you figure out you’ve paid $35 for a sassy box and a pair of tweezers.
You don’t need a third pair of tweezers. Junior year of high school, I tweezed. In college, I tried waxing; I broke out every time. A couple of years ago, I discovered brow razors.
Every time I shave my brows, I’m a little weirded out by the idea of using a blade so close to my eyeball. What if my hand slipped? I mean, that would never happen... unless there was an earthquake. That could happen if there was an earthquake. What if there was an earthquake?
Razors are great for cleaning up the natural shape of your brows, but what if you want the shape of someone else’s? Say, Calista Flockhart? Catherine Zeta Jones? Raquel Welch? A celebrity-inspired eyebrow stencil can be yours for about $3.75 plus shipping and handling.
But wait! There’s more... Last weekend, I bought Brow Envy, a home eyebrow makeover kit. Brow Envy. I don’t get it. I mean, I understand that the name is supposed to make me think of Freud’s theory that women have psychological problems because subconsciously we feel jealous of men and their man-parts.
And, I understand that by thinking the word “penis,” I’m supposed to think, “Wow. This company is sassy. Don’t I want to be perceived as high-spirited? I most certainly do not want to be perceived as mousey. I need this eyebrow kit.”
And, I’m also supposed to think, “Wow. Eyebrows are just like penises. They are both body parts that can cause psychological problems. If I can cause other people to have psychological problems, I have the power. I need this eyebrow kit.”
Brow Envy comes with only three stencils: Girl Next Door, Glamour Girl, and Femme Fatale. I am not Girl Next Door, so I positioned Femme Fatale over one of my eyebrows. Sadly, Femme Fatale was too long. I tried Glamour Girl – also too long. I positioned Girl Next Door over my right eyebrow and tried to follow the instructions.
Brow Envy gave me Third-Arm Envy. I wished there was some way to keep the stencil in place while fumbling with the pencil and powder and gel, oh my.
There is. Someone actually invented the “Stencil Band Holder,” which is little more than the elastic band See’s Candy puts around a box of chocolates. ■TO FIND THE HIGHEST POINT in your brow’s arch, hold the pencil so that it is parallel to your nose. Look straight ahead. Place the pencil at the outside edge of your iris. The point where the pencil touches your brow is where the highest point in the arch should be. ■ANGLE A PENCIL from your nostril to the outside corner of your eye. The point where the pencil touches your brow is where the tail of your brow should end.
MARIEL HOWSEPIAN digs black coffee, fairy tales and a man in coveralls. She lives in Santa Monica and
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 18, 2008. Read the original PDF.