The Taming of The Brow

“Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty . . .” – 1 Peter 3:3a

“Vanity . . . definitely my favorite sin.” – John Milton, The Devil’s Advocate

Let’s dip into the comment section of this recent post and see what common thread emerges . . .

River Poet wrote, “Trust me, with your handy unibrow, no one is mistaking you for a girl anytime soon ;-)”

Pat wrote, “Oh, I love Love this! Just fun. And, that book bag looks essential as well as a pink blackberry. Now, THAT, is a bit girlie but I agree your eyebrows should undercut any of that!”

Pamela wrote, “Keep the man purse, ditch the eyebrow bridge. You know what they say about the wax: A little dab’ll do ya.”

Captain Steve wrote, “I did stare at the eyebrows for about 5 minutes though. Perhaps you should consider waxing or plucking? I hear shaving does some unfortunate things.”

And Kitty wrote, “Yank out that unibrow,” which spawned this funny little email exchange . . .

Oct 23, 8:02 AM:

I may have to explore ways to lose the unibrow. There’s a long post in there somewhere . . .

Oct 23, 4:33 PM:

I showed my daughter the unibrow pic and she said, “Oh that’s Photoshopped.” It’s not, correct? LOL. I like the way you humor it.

Oct 28, 6:16 AM:

Stay tuned for the unibrow post . . .

Oct 29, 2:41 AM:

Oh I will. Gotcha on my feed. Be careful with that thing. You may actually be able to see better after burning it down, er, ripping it out.

Oct 29, 7:37 AM:

There are so many options . . . all of them quite unpleasant! Ugh!

Oct 29, 3:28 PM:

Waxing is the way to go. Not as painful as childbirth and it’s over in a few seconds. If you do it that way, make sure you take a picture of the unibrow on the fabric they rip it out with. Dude that would be awesome!

Indeed. Before we get to that picture (consider yourself warned up front), I suppose I should give you a brief history of The Brow . . .

I’ve had it forever. I tried to find some pictures of myself as a youngster sporting the beginnings of The Beast but I’m guessing my parents burned them all to avoid embarrassment. But I did find this one . . .

Probably my senior year in high school. I had given up trying to dominate The Brow by this point after a particularly harrowing experience a year or so prior when I allowed a couple of persuasive (read: attractive) beauty school students to go at me with their tweezers and giggles. I ended up shaving and shaping and plucking into the wee hours, trying to clean up the havoc they wreaked above my nose. I didn’t do too bad . . .

But frustration got the best of me. The Brow stayed . . .

. . . and stayed some more, making an appearance in this engagement picture of me with my smokin’ hot wife-to-be, circa Spring, 1990. I’m twenty-two. Young and naïve. Almost sporting a mullet. Those were the days. And The Brow was not an issue. I’d found someone who loved me – a big fat dude with questionable hygiene practices and various attitude problems to boot – and agreed to marry me (and voluntarily have regular sex with me), despite all my flaws and an overabundance of facial hair above the eyes.  She has stood by her man and kept the little things little . . .

. . . even as I grew heavier, and my eyebrows thickened into one big black enormous equator around the top of my head.

And this is pretty much how The Beast has stayed . . .

Until today.

BEFORE

Keeping The Brow just doesn’t put me in very impressive company. There’s this guy . . .

. . . a Communist, and this guy . . .

. . . who must have figured out early on that being great with eyebrow doesn’t sit well with the constituency. And then there’s this crabby fella . . .

. . . and we all know whose side he’s on . . .

So I took an informal poll this week amongst family, coworkers and friends, and the results were far more lopsided that some recent presidential polls . . .

“Do Something with The Brow” – 99%

“Leave It Alone” – 1%

And since she’s a good friend and wouldn’t say anything to hurt anyone’s feelings, I threw her vote out and called it unanimous.

I picked today, Saturday, November 01, 2008, as The Day The Brow Gets Tamed.

And yet it almost didn’t happen . . .

I awoke early, browsed over to www.yellowpages.com and searched for hair stylists in my area.

About 300.

So I narrowed the search to those places that offer Wax Hair Removal.

Five.

Much better. Or so I thought . . .

The first place on the list made me play phone roulette with a big listing of stylists and no operator to referee. I tried five extensions and got five voice mail greetings, so I gave up on them. I tried the next business and their number had been disconnected. Strike two. The next place on the list of results had a long distance number and a website starting with ww, not the usual www. Strike three.

Since baseball season is now officially over, I let the three-strikes-and-your-out rule slide and dialed The Surface Salon and Spa. They had an impressive website, some positive reviews, accommodating business hours, and a receptionist that answered the phone. Only she asked me to hold and then, unbeknownst to me, lost the call. I must have looked pretty silly jumping out of my office chair and spilling my coffee when she called me back and my BlackBerry rang, quite loudly, in my ear; nothing like a little Slipknot to wake one up even further. She apologized for the goof and asked how she could help.

Impressive.

So I scheduled an appointment.

I arrived and met Ashley who, after getting over the initial shock of my monstrosity, and perhaps internally contemplating an effective plan of attack, shook my hand and led me to a very comfy back room decorated with muted green draperies, soothing artwork, dimmed track lighting . . . and a massage table. NOT what I was expecting . . .

Yes, that’s a smile on my face. And some powdery stuff. Ashley, who just took her state boards last week, is very kind and takes a great amount of time to explain how the waxing procedure works. I tell her all this will be documented for my extremely successful, high-traffic blog, and she rises to the occasion with charm, wisdom, and a great amount of patience.

She starts small, doing some combing and trimming and gentle plucking. Then she takes to waxing around the edges, like a master sculpting a masterpiece. Then . . .

. . . comes The Big Yank . . .

And you know what? It didn’t really hurt all that much. For those of you with strong stomachs (cough . . . KITTY! . . . cough), here’s a close-up . . .

That’s some serious follicle yankage, y’all! I let her keep it . . .

. . . and She Who Must Be Obeyed and I went out to the Flat Top Grill to celebrate. I had one of these . . .

. . . with the requisite orange slice, and tried not to itch my freshly-exposed and stinging skin as we ate DIY stir fry . . .

. . . and laughed at the craziness of it all.

I’m now accepting donations for the Monthly Brow Maintenance Fund . . .

. . . so I can keep The Beast on a leash, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to set up my Paypal account . . .