Brow Beating

The Artist D Horror Series (October 2008)

October is upon us and if society has given us any time to experiment with our looks from head to toe it is during the celebration of the dead — Halloween and The Day of the Dead. If you ever needed permission to break every fashion rule I’ve ever told you, now would be the time to do it. So run, run into the night and throw on anything you wish for it’s the season of experimentation!

In fact I personally wait until Halloween month in order to try some of the more outlandish things I have in mind. Want to change your hair color to Ronald McDonald orange? Now is the time, ladies! Do you want to shave your head and see what people say? October is your free ticket to do something dumb with your tried and tested look. That is at least do something people think is dumb.

Speaking of radical changes with your looks last month I left some of you furrowing your brow at me over shaving them off, so let’s discuss. Shaving the eyebrows is a delicate science. Much like bald men, a person without eyebrows (or painted on eyebrows) is a very special breed.

Ms Crawford and Her Brows

The good thing about shaving off your brows is painting on the ones you like best. Did you ever give much thought to how much your eyebrows do to your entire face? An incredible amount of people don’t realize that they can effectively take up some of the vacant land on their forehead by adjusting the brow. If you’ve got one of those foreheads that they could show a Sunday matinee on you may want to arch the brows and push them up a bit.

Remember the brow bone and brow can turn you from femme fatale to obvious drag queen. Some say the shape of your face is the indicator as to what “style” of eyebrow you can sport. After some research I found you can pretty much gauge this by looking at popular culture. Forgive me for even suggesting to template yourself from the mainstream, but if you’ve got a mug the shape of Joan Crawford then you can do the Crawford brows!  If you have a long very oval face then a straighter brow is suggested, just like those Conehead characters from Saturday Night Live. I’m not kidding! These are perfect examples.

Oval shaped heads do best with a straighter brow.

The thing some people unfortunately don’t realize that they need a steady hand. Remember, you’re going to be painting symmetrical lines on your face. If you’ve got a shaky hand you might think twice. A trick many use is using a cardboard cutout of the brow they love. Just like a stencil! That’s a drag queen trick, but nobody said you couldn’t learn a few things about being a girl from a drag queen.

Unibrows are never in style. Unless you’re “one of those guys” who happens to make it look good, I suggest you mow that center strip right down! Tweezing is painful, waxing is quite the kick but if you don’t want to bother you could always just take the beard trimmer to the center and sides of your eyebrows. Many frown on this practice, but I’ve certainly never had any issues with it. An electric razor certainly works in a pinch in all kinds of places!

Amanda Palmer

I’ve never been one to do much with the brows as they grew pretty fabulously all on their own. People used to pay me based on photos of me raising one brow. It was key to my dominatrix shtick. Eyebrows make a statement. If you draw them on or shape them the wrong way you might look thoroughly and forever surprised, mischievous or painfully uninterested.

And 1, 2, 3 ... Lift that Brow (The Artist D, 2011)

The bottom line here is whatever you do, don’t just draw a straight broad big old streak of a line for an eyebrow. Rarely will I tell you this but please don’t do anything funny. You may remove your brow but whatever you replace it with should look like an eyebrow. Better yet it should look like it belongs there. That is unless you are going for something strange which is perfectly alright … if you like that sort of thing. The only unique “weird” eyebrows I’ve ever seen belong to the musical goddess Amanda Palmer. She has replaced her brows with some crazy looking business. This could have been a disaster, but it’s really quite lovely!

The eyebrow is a lot like the final frontier to some people. It’s something that could easily be changed, altered, adjusted, colored and most certainly corrupted, but yet so few do anything with them. Like mom always said, they grow back! Play with them. Go to town and see what fits … especially if it’s October!

Tags: brows, eye makeup, featured

Category: Style, Transgender How To