WHERE ARE MY EYEBROWS?

I really did used to have eyebrows. Two of them. No unibrow on me! They were not dainty little arched eyebrows. They were wide and thick. They were black...just like my eyelashes. Their shape was nice. Curved just right, I felt. I never really paid much attention to them. After all, I had had them for as long as I could remember. I took them for granted. I wish I hadn't.

I was sent to charm school. Yes, you heard me. CHARM SCHOOL. My parents sent me to it. Gee, wonder why? ::grin:: They never sent my three sisters there. I was the "lucky" one who got (needed) to go. My God, I think it ruined me for life.

The first day in walked our main teacher. She wore a very pleasant smile on her face. She introduced herself and scanned the room. While she was scanning all of us giggly females, she was talking about how pretty (liar) we were. She commented on the entire group as a whole. She did not single out any one person for specific praise. We all had lovely hair. We all had fine figures. We all had nice posture. We all had outstanding cheekbones. We all had well-tended and well-tweezed eyebrows......

And it was right then that she parked her eyes on my thick eyebrows and said, "Well, all of us except one." I was horrified. I felt my face heat up, and I am quite certain my coloring was scarlet. She might as well have dragged me out of my seat and taken me to the front of the class to show the other girls how NOT to ever allow their eyebrows to look. I really did want to cry. I was so humiliated.

After I got home, I did not tell my parents what had happened. I was too embarrassed. Besides, parents always think their kids are attractive. They just would have tried to bolster my deflated self-image. No, it was best that I keep the snide remark to myself. It was also best if I could find Mom's tweezers and fix my apparently atrocious eyebrow situation.

I rooted through Mom's makeup and face and body creams and hairspray until I came upon the needed tweezers. Then I leaned very close to the mirror. I grabbed hold of one of the hairs with her trusty tweezers and pulled. Oh my God. The pain. It was wicked nasty. I was shocked. And I had about a bazillion more hairs that would need yanked out if I was going to have the "proper" eyebrows for a young lady. I remember pausing and wondering if I really and truly cared what that teacher thought of my damn eyebrows.

And I did care. If she thought they were unpleasant, then surely every other person on the planet must think they were awful, too. Right?

So I plucked and plucked and plucked. Tears filled my eyes with every rip of the tweezers. The entire area beneath the freshly tweezed eyebrows was a harsh red and swollen. Ah, but I had nice and thin eyebrows. Mission accomplished.

At the next session of charm school, the teacher once again complimented all of us. She even made mention of how ALL of us had lovely eyebrows and smiled directly at me. That time there was no exception. I was in the cool club. The Beautiful Brows Club.

My eyebrows never grew back. Sure, I would get the strays here and there. But never many. And never enough to even come close to being the way they were prior to that initial tweezing. Fine by me. I had great eyebrows. Poor schmucks who had to maintain their eyebrows. I was so lucky I did not have to, wasn't I?

Then Brooke Shields came on the scene with her thick ones. And everyone had to have ones just like hers. I would have had to use a paint roller to get my skinny little brows to look like that. I did try an eyebrow pencil to add some bulk, but that was a disaster. I tend to knead that portion of my face when I am perplexed. Smeared eyebrows is not a hot look.

That trend passed, but the stars never seemed to return to the very thin eyebrows. They found a happy median between the two. One I can never reach.

I sit here with my barely there eyebrows and curse that teacher. Had it not been for her, I would have never thinned my brows to this extent.

I want my eyebrows back.

"The eyebrows form but a small part of the face, and yet they can darken the whole of life by the scorn they express." ~Demetrius (Phalereus)

Oh mannnnn, now I find out I cannot even express scorn without eyebrows. ::sigh of disgust::