I try to look on the bright side of things, so when this whole stay-at-home order started back in March, I welcomed the opportunity to wear less makeup [1], give the loungewear sets in the back of my closet some love, and take a break from heat styling [2] my hair. I can confidently say boycotting my eyebrow tweezers wasn't part of my initial social-distancing beauty routine [3], but here we are.
I was lucky enough to never be affected by the overplucked eyebrow phase of the '90s [4] and early '00s; my mom served as a cautionary tale with her eyebrows that she swears still to this day haven't grown back. Because of this, I naturally have thicker eyebrows, but admittedly, the tails weren't as filled in as I would like. (My dream brow is somewhere in the neighbourhood of Taylor Hill and Lily Collins.)
Left: Brows From February / Right: Current Brow
Pre-COVID-19 I used to lightly touch up and pluck stray hairs from my eyebrows maybe once a week but I relied on Joey Healy [5], the king of brows himself, to routinely fix the shape and do maintenance on them [6]. However, I haven't seen Healy since February, which was five months ago. During this time at home, I could have taken my eyebrow shaping into my own hands — I'm confident I could do it without totally ruining my brows — but, I just didn't feel like it.
So, here we are four months later and I can't remember the last time I took a pair of tweezers to my brows. Instead, what I've been doing is applying a brow serum to help nourish hair growth [7] and, I think it's working. I've also occasionally trimmed the super long hairs that I notice sticking out of place. The other day, I had one that was so outrageously long that I ran into the living room to show my boyfriend yelling, "Look! Look!" to which he responded with a weird look on his face, "Congrats?"
Left: Brows From April / Right: Current Brow
My goal for this beauty experiment is to finally fill in the ends of my brows to the point where I don't need any colour cosmetics to achieve the look [8] I want. Considering I'm rarely going outside and I don't see other people, save for my boyfriend who I live with, it's been easier than I thought just letting my eyebrows grow wild [9]. Although I'm not going to lie: it has been very tempting to pluck the stray hairs that pop up way out of place — I mean so out of place they're borderline on my eyelid — on my brow bone. I'm just thankful that I was persistent enough with my plucking back when I did do my brows, that I don't have many hairs growing in between my eyes... yet.
Moral of the story: right now is the perfect time to do those not-so-pretty beauty treatments or experiments [10] and not touching my eyebrows right now feels weirdly freeing.
Eyebrow Serums I've Been Using
Considering I call Joey Healy the king of brows (because he is), it should come as no surprise that I'm obsessed with his Joey Healy Brow Renovation Serum [11] ($125). I love that it has a spoolie applicator so you can easily comb it through your eyebrows.
The neuLASH Brow Enhancing Serum [12] ($100) is a bestseller and top-rated for a reason — it works. In three to four weeks you'll start to notice thicker hair regrowth in your eyebrows from nightly using this serum.
I was told by a makeup artist when the No7 Lash Impact Lash Serum [13] ($10) launched that this product does wonders on nourishing eyebrow hair, too. After using it for two months, I'm a believer.