Ah, the halcyon days of the ’90s, when we humans dwelled placidly under the dot-com bubble, foolishly investing all of our money in Beanie Babies and plucking out most of our eyebrow hairs. Now, in the 2010s, we are all left bereft, hopelessly gluing strands of our head-hair to our patchy faces and cursing the gods who abandoned us.
Or so I gather from this New York Times trend piece on women’s eyebrows by Rachel Syme. It opens, “When Joni Mitchell warbled that you ‘don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,’ she was referring to trees and flowers, but her lament could just as easily apply to the bushy forest of a woman’s eyebrows: Once plucked, the terrain is never the same.” Damn.
As we all shudderingly recall, pencil-thin brows were a thing people did back in the day. Now, however, Cara Delevingne has emerged from the rubble of the universe, and we all want our voluminous brows back. Unfortunately, however, “getting the never-plucked look of a 21-year-old British model can be a tall order for women who have been tweezing, trimming and waxing for years,” writes Syme. “Bald spots in the brow are notoriously hard to correct.” Fuck!
Don’t worry, though — there are, like, tons of solutions. Symes enumerates a few: putting Rogaine on your brows, which is a fun lifehack; applying a topical eyebrow-growth solution that retails for a mere $110; eyebrow transplants, which involve grafting individual strands of hair into one’s face; eyebrow extensions; and, my personal favorite, EYEBROW WIGS.
On the subject of eyebrow wigs, Syme has penned the most beautiful sentence in the English language: “Another development, emerging from Australia, is Final Touch Brows, which offers ‘eyebrow wigs’ for special occasions, akin to a merkin applied to the face.” A MERKIN APPLIED TO THE FACE. (Ladies, get that supermodel look with your very own face-merkin **for special occasion use only**. A pair of diminutive pubic wigs glued to one’s forehead: every fashionista’s secret weapon.)
Tragically, the fashion industry is maybe trying to make face-Brazilian waxes happen already.
Image via Getty.