If your eyes are the windows to your soul, then your eyebrows are the window frames. Seriously, I cannot stress enough how different it makes my face look when I’ve got a groomed pair of brows. It’s by no mean a requirement; we live in such an enlightened age that women are not required to do anything in particular when it comes to beauty, looks and fashion. But I am of the personal belief that generally, a good, maintained and groomed pair of eyebrows can work wonders for your face. They can knock years off, act as a slimming aid or even help to give a small-featured face a bit of bulk. In short, they help maintain the equilibrium of our faces.

As I’ve said a number of times in previous posts, I get my eyebrows threaded. I try and keep them in reasonable check in between sessions, but it’s very easy to over do this. I used to hate my eyebrows. I’m ‘blessed’ with a pair of thick, full, insanely dark eyebrows. Sometimes they can veer dangerously close to the territory of the mono-brow. To combat this, the young, hopelessly clueless me used to shave them to create some kind of shape. It was hideous, and it didn’t work very well, and luckily I have learnt from this mistake. In recent years, I’ve even invested in a couple of make up products specifically designed to help keep my eyebrows looking their absolute polished bet. They are:

 and 

Soap & Glory’s Arch De Triump, a lovely double-ended pencil with a soft, highly pigmented end for filling in and creating a shape, and a highlighter the other end (which I’ve found works wonders for disguising unwanted stray hairs and pretending your brows aren’t in desperate need of a groom!) and Benefit’s amazing Brow Zings kit, which comes with a wax for setting and shaping, and a soft, blendable powder for filling in. Magical.

It might sound weird, but I also think that brows are a great way of expressing your own personality and personal style. Just take a look at the picture at the top of this post. Most of those brows are instantly recognisable, no? I think I’m somewhere between a Sophia Loren and a Deborah Harry myself, but I covet a lovely pair of Malia Nurmi brows. Even more than that, though, it’s crucial that your brows fit your look. There’s no point having a pair of full, bushy, Russian folk-tastic brows and rocking a polished 50’s pin up or uberglam flapper look in the rest of your fashion and beauty choices. We can fake brows by using a number of cover-up-and-draw-on methods should we want to change our look temporarily, for a fancy dress party or just on a whim. But something as permanent as eyebrows takes a lot of thinking before you change. If it all goes wrong, you have to endure the agonising wait for them to grow back out before you can try again. And sometimes brows don’t grow back the same. There are numerous women of a certain age who suffer with sparse brows due to over-plucking in their youth. They can sort this out with a bit of eyeshadow or a pencil should they so wish, but it’s an important thing to remember. If you draw something on, you can always wipe it off again. But if you pluck out a hair, you have to wait for it to grow back; and you can never be sure of the result until it shows itself.

Brows are a tool. Use them well; with great eyebrows comes great responsibility!