Everyone has overplucked, overdrawn, and overdone it with the waxing on their eyebrows. These are the mistakes we have ALL made.
Some beauty instincts come naturally. Generally speaking, even though you may need some practice, it’s pretty clear that nail polish goes on your nails, lipstick goes on your lips, and self-tanner should be applied evenly so’s not to look like every part of you went to the Bahamas besides your feet. Eyebrows are more difficult. It’s hard to tell what shape, arch, angle, and length work best for you. Filling in your brows is confusing; making them even is endlessly frustrating, and dyeing them yourself is just so far out of most people’s capabilities, it does not usually end well.
I recently started getting my eyebrows threaded and am loving the results, but while allowing them to grow out so Alina Isakharova from Paul LaBrecque Salon & Spa could make them perfectly even in the arch, I started getting tempted to pluck them myself. In order to deter my urges, I started thinking about all the possible errors I could make–and have made numerous times.
Everyone has over-plucked, overdrawn, and overdone it with the waxing, so let’s all join hands and sing a song in honor of the mistakes of eyebrows past.
1. Over-plucking them into oblivion.
Let’s start with the standard: over-plucking. We’ve all stood in front of the mirror, scrutinizing our brows until all we see are massive shrubs atop our eyes that must. Be. Eliminated. 25 minutes later and our eyebrows were indeed eliminated, but now we look terrifying.
2. Drawing them unevenly.
Sometimes I look at myself in photos from high school and get a little confused by how two-faced I literally looked. One of my eyebrows was totally a Natalie Portman, while the other was a Megan Fox. It looked like I was constantly judging everyone (though to be fair, I was a teenager, so I definitely was judging everyone all of the time).
3. Using a too-dark pencil to fill them in.
Having dark brown hair means you should absolutely use dark brown to fill in your brows, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong–and it actually winds up looking comical. Get a shade or two lighter than your brows’ natural color (which might actually be lighter or different from the hair on your head). Try to coordinate your brows to the lightest hairs you have, not the darkest.
4. Trying to make an arch and failing miserably.
Having yearned for ultra-arched brows for years but being bestowed with slightly curved but mostly straight ones, I used to try to change the shape dramatically. This usually ended in nears, primarily because I would wind up doing #1.
5. Two words: Tadpole brows.
You know of what I speak.
6. Trusting a salon that clearly doesn’t specialize in brows.
One of my friends had a nail technician shame her for having a “mustache and caterpillar eyebrows,” so she gave into the pressure and wound up getting waxed at her $7 manicure nail salon. That was not a cute rash to cover up with foundation. It will not be like The Princess Diaries, where you go in with bushy brows and come out with a blowout, airbrushed makeup, and a kingdom; you’ll just wind up with a mild burn and a need for high-coverage concealer.
7. Getting rid of a chunk.
They’ll be just right if I take out that annoying little chunk right there, you think to yourself. But then suddenly, you realize that without that clump of 5 or 6 hairs, your eyebrow suddenly looks like you gave it a notch. And not some sort of cool, unique I-definitely-do-apocalyptic-obscure-performance-art-while-DJing kind of thing, but more like Riff Raff.
8. Trying to wax your brows yourself.
Don’t do this. You won’t do it well. Your skin
9. Plucking way too much from the center.
You think you’ll just get rid of your unibrow hair, and BAM, suddenly you look like your eyebrows are running away from one another.
10. Letting the waxing pro go wild on you.
Just a liiiiittle bit more, and they’ll be perfect, right? Until 10 minutes from now when your face is bright red and on fire from the nose up.
11. Using brow stencils.
Sure, they seem like a good idea, but your eyebrows should actually be proportionate and specific according to your face.
12. DIY brow dye job.
While having a professional do this for you can look amaaaazing (just look at Jena Malone!), this is definitely a job best left to being done in salons–not your bathroom. At best, you might get a decent DIY result. At worst, you might wind up blinding yourself. Weigh the pros and cons on that one.
13. Flirting by wiggling them at somebody.
Okay, maybe you haven’t done this before, but I REALLY WANT TO DETER PEOPLE WHO DO. So if you know somebody who does, show them this list under the guise of sharing beauty content and all that, and then ask them to please pay attention to #13. Because wiggling brows as a flirting gesture doesn’t just hurt them, it hurts us all.
Which mistakes have you fallen victim of? Commiserate in the comments!