We all have our beauty “thing.” For me, it is and has always been, having a perfect eyebrow. Long before I realized how important they are to your appearance, I was tweezing every other day. I think I started when I was sixteen and I have never stopped. I am so obsessed with my eyebrows that I have actually thought about the Survivor reality TV series and realized that unless I could bring a pair of tweezers and a mirror, I’d never apply to be on that show. I’m totally serious. Forget about eating bugs, that’s nothing to the sheer panic I would feel to having ungroomed eyebrows.
Being raised in a household with a mother who knows a thing or two about beauty tips, she warned me and my sister to never over pluck, and we heeded her advice. Lately, I have been more attuned to makeup trends and the industry beauty experts are unanimous that the color, shape and thickness of your eyebrow play a major role in defining your face.
The diagram above and below illustrates the four fundamental spots in your eyebrow area that can be used as a guide to help you get a perfect eyebrow.
Let’s start with some basics, these are the tried and true recommend tips for shaping your eyebrow to suit your face – and your nose plays a role in helping you determine this. You will need a long, thin stick such as a cuticle stick and you will position it against the outside of your nostril and move it like the hands of a clock, to three positions to determine where your eyebrow should begin, where the arch should be and where your eyebrow should end.
Figure 1: To begin, take a cuticle stick and position it vertically against the outside of your nostril to the middle of your forehead. Ideally, your eyebrow should begin at the point where the stick touches your brow area. Any eyebrow “hairs” that fall outside the brush (toward the bridge of your nose) should be plucked. If there is a big gap between the stick and where your eyebrow begins (i.e. over the white of your eye) you should let them grow in.
Figure 2: The arch is the highest point of the eyebrow and I believe it should be very subtle. General consensus is that a straight eyebrow makes you look younger. A straight eyebrow is actually a combination of being a uniform thickness from beginning to end and also a straight line, meaning it doesn’t dramatically curve up and go down to form an arch shape. To find the ideal place where an arch should start, position the cuticle stick in the same manner as Figure 1 (against your nostril), but turn it so the stick is directly over your pupil. The highest point of the arch should be where the stick touches your brow area.
Figure 3: To determine where the eyebrow should end, position the cuticle stick in the same manner as Figure 1 (against your nostril) but this time turn it so the stick is directly at the outside edge of your eye.
Figure 4: The horizontal line. This is the imaginary left-to-right line from where the eyebrow begins to where it ends. Ideally, they begin at the same spot to give the illusion that your eyebrow is a straight line.
You may be someone who can apply all these basic tips due to full eyebrows. I do have friends who have over plucked and have nothing left but a wire-thin eyebrow. Click here for a link to Buzz Feed that shows before and after celeb eyebrows. The good news is that there are so many fantastic cosmetics on the market that can be used to achieve the perfect brow that looks natural. I use a combination of four things: an eyebrow pencil to define the shape, eyebrow powder to fill in sparse areas, and I finish with a clear mascara to “set” the eyebrow. When picking the color of the brow pencil and powder, always go a few shades lighter than your hair color. The final step to achieve a flawless look is to use eyeshadow right below the brow line. Below is an indispensable step-by-step illustration on how to get a perfect eyebrow.
