TOPEKA, Kan. - I have a thing about my eyebrows. The eyes may be the windows to the soul, but, eyebrows definitely let you know what decade that soul was hanging out in. As a girl in the early 70's my look was totally natural. By the end of August, my eyebrows were bleached white, sometimes with a green tint from all the chlorine in the public pools where I spent my summer days.
By the mid-70's I had been introduced to woman's greatest friend... and, enemy, the tweezers. I spent many a Saturday during my 9th grade year sitting on the sink in our upstairs bathroom gazing at my eyebrows and plucking. And plucking. I plucked so much that summer that I had that perpetually surprised look as if I had just seen the neighbor boy naked in his back yard.
Which I swear never happened.
My poor eyebrows! By the time I was done with them, all that remained was a thin line, popping out over my aviator frames with the tinted lenses. I was going for Julie, from the Mod Squad, but, I never quite rocked that look. High school came and went with a variety of eye brow styles.
All in all, I must have spent over a hundred hours in our tiny bathroom with the harsh lighting trying to perfect the eyebrows. I let them grow in a little as my homage to Brooke Shields, but, was always on alert for that spare hair that would ruin the arch of my brow. Between brow patrol and baking in the sun slathered in Crisco it is amazing I got anything done!
After college, I got serious about my brows. Brow decals, so you could draw on the perfect brow. Brow lighteners, brow pencils, professional brow waxing. I tried them all. I spent a ton of time and worry on those darn brows.
And now, years later, I more fully understand how youth is wasted on the young. At this point in my life, the eyes are going. So, even though I now have a nice bathroom all to myself, with great lighting, I cannot see a darn thing.
I end up sitting on my vanity with my nose pressed up against the mirror in an attempt to hunt down and destroy those pesky, coarse, gray hairs that sprout up and out and give me the appearance of a mad professor. The one good thing that comes from peering into the mirror to find those suckers is that I can pluck the occasional chin or nose hair that I must now contend with.
At least now I have cuter glasses.
Thanks for sharing. Turning 50 this year, I can relate to how things change.