Dear Eyebrows,
It’s hard to know where to start. I’ve written and rewritten this letter in my mind so many times, thought about what I should say to you and how I should say it, and nothing ever seems quite right.
Here goes. Deep breaths, deep breaths.
You and I, we’ve had our ups and downs (literally and figuratively, what with all the raising and furrowing), and I take full responsibility for that. My sudden interest in your shape and overall appearance must have come as a surprise — all through high school and college I left you alone, never even running a tiny brush through you. Then, one day after graduation, I went in full-force with what I imagine was a very scary-looking pair of tweezers. Only recently did I look back and regret this.
I know now I should’ve appreciated you for what you were: not the thickest, darkest brows, but my brows nonetheless, bestowed upon me by nature and genetics. Instead, I spent my early-to-mid twenties ravaging you, totally unaware that a new era was getting ready to dawn, during which Cara Delevingne would rise up as the New Brooke Shields and lead a nation of women with amazing brows, that I would one day be desperate for you to be “on fleek.” I have friends whose eyebrows are on fleek and while I love them all, I also hate them all. (They know who they are.)
Sure, I occasionally get compliments on you, but these people don’t know the truth. They don’t know what you really look like underneath the pencil and powder and wax. They don’t know that you did not wake up like this, but are in fact the product of 10-15 minutes spent carefully applying and examining (and re-examining) what I try to make look like tiny, natural hairs each morning. They don’t know that when I spend the night with someone I have to dart to the bathroom as soon as I wake up, Kristen Wiig in “Bridesmaids”-style, rushing to make you look presentable again before my paramour awakes.
I know now I should’ve appreciated you for what you were: not the thickest, darkest brows, but my brows nonetheless, bestowed upon me by nature and genetics.
I look back at photos of myself in high school and college and long to start over and have the brows of my teen self, when I let you grow wild and free. Maybe you looked a little crazy at times, and one of you has always been bigger and fuller than the other, sort of like those fraternal twins where one is tall and “classically” beautiful and the other is short and you know, also cute but in a different way, but I should have been better to you. I know that now. I’d take back every Anastasia Brow Pencil I ever owned if it meant I could have you back the way you were.
My hope is that, someday, I can right the wrongs I did to you — waxing, plucking, even that dark, mercifully brief period of shaving we’ll not speak of again — and we can get past this. I’ve spent hours searching phrases like “eyebrow transplant” (the hairs on my leg have to be good for something, right?), “eyebrows rogaine” (this one actually seems kind of promising, assuming I can manage not get any of it in my eyeballs) and “eyebrow tattoos” (I won’t get into how much additional time I’ve spent stalking Shaughnessy Kelly’s Instagram and considering trying to crowdfund a trip to her studio) in hopes that I can make it up to you. I know I can — maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, I’ll give you the semi-permanent-to-permanent makeover of a lifetime. Someday, you too, will finally be on fleek.
Yours apologetically (but hopefully),
Jess
