I Got Micro-Bladed and Permanently Said Goodbye to my '90s Brows
Say the words "face tattoo" and most people picture Mike Tyson, or perhaps Lil Wayne. Say the words "permanent makeup" and most people picture little old ladies in church with blue-black eyebrows that look like faded Sharpie drawings. Say "microblading" and people...have no idea what you're talking about, even though you're talking about the lovechild of face tattoos and permanent makeup. It sounds crazy and stupid and impulsive and too good to be true. Which is exactly why I did it.
Like many of us in our early-to-mid-thirties, my eyebrows have been recovering from a beating they took in the late '90s, when a pencil-thin Christina Aguilera brow was the epitome of sophistication and modern beauty (at least to this Minnesota girl). Hair on our faces? No thanks! My friends and I spent hours ripping these tiny hairs from above our eyes. We had no idea what a huge mistake we were making, even as we wore our mistakes to school. One girl in my class unintentionally shaved her eyebrows into what can only described as an upside-down Nike logo. Another showed up to a dance with a right brow that had been reduced to a small, horizontal line just above the middle of her eyeball. She'd tried to even it out, she explained, and took it too far. Was it noticeable, she wondered? Only if you looked at her face.
Now, brows are back. But not my brows. I may have done my best to try and move on from my Xtina days, but my brows have not forgotten, and try as I might to just let them go to seed and return to their wild natural beauty, they are sparse and patchy. Because we live in a blessed time where makeup tutorials abound and generous souls spend their free time educating the masses, I did learn to fill them in. The extra time in my routine was worth it; with a little bit of powder, the right brush, and a sweep of something called brow mascara, I looked like a person with a complete face. With eyebrows, I looked awake, put together, complete. Some people fear leaving the house without lipstick, foundation, or mascara. I fear leaving the house without my eyebrows, lest I be mistaken for an escaped lab rat.
I had my routine down and I was generally happy with my appearance. So, why did I agree to let a stranger essentially tattoo my face? Because I am a stellar combination of vain and impulsive, and because a friend got hers done right before Christmas and it looked incredible. As a birthday present to myself, I decided I deserved some eyebrows.
I supposed I could have just gone to a salon (or a mall kiosk) to get some eyebrow extensions. Instead, I went to my local tattoo shop. With a baby because I don't let signs like "no children" tell me what to do and also because he is only a few months old and I never know when he needs to be fed from my boobs.
The woman who would be performing the deed, Emily Snow, is like a goth cheerleader: a bubbly personality and warm smile decked out in all black, with beautiful, full black eyebrows and long black lashes accenting her perfect, pale skin. We are essentially opposites, but I looked at her and thought, "I want to look like you."
Emily read my mind and let me down easy.
"You won't look like this. We're going to give you a look that works for you."
Like any responsible adult, I had not researched microblading at all. I just knew that my friend had amazing eyebrows, and I was going to have them, too. So I was a little surprised when Emily pulled out a brow pencil and outlined my natural eyebrows like my son traces his hand with a crayon. Does she know what she's doing? Is this what I'm going to look like? Turns out, she was just giving herself some lines to color inside of, and I was not going to walk out of the shop with cartoon eyebrows. When we had the shape right, she covered my forehead in numbing cream and sealed it in with plastic wrap. It was very attractive and normal. But not as normal as laying down and letting a woman use what is essentially an xacto blade to create individual eyebrow "hairs" by scratching you repeatedly with a blade dipped in ink.
People always ask if it hurt: Nope. It felt like a cat scratch―a little annoying, but nothing to cry over. People never ask if I had to sneeze the entire time, but I did. Isn't that weird?
Emily scratch-scratch-scratched away, and I tried to ignore the sound, which was the sound of my skin being scraped open to deposit some ink that would look like convincing eyebrow hairs. We sat like this for an hour, which may have been because she kept having to stop for my sneeze breaks and because I am the kind of person who consistently needs to be having a conversation with anyone who is doing something that requires a lot of concentration and involves them being close to my body (phlebotomists, dental hygienists, face tattooers).
I'm a person with extremely sensitive skin. A recent photo of me made it appear like I'd recently been the victim of an attempted choking, when in reality my neck had been gently grazed by my infant son. I could never really get my eyebrows waxed because the irritation would cause swelling around my eyes. And of course, I had scheduled a meeting for directly after this appointment, when I would surely look like a complete freak and everyone would know that I had a face tattoo done for vanity.
Nope. My skin was fine. The only people who knew I'd just had my eyebrows tattooed on were every single person I encountered that day because I would announce to everyone in earshot that I'd just had my eyebrows microbladed, then launch into an unwelcome explanation of the process while they nodded politely.
My boyfriend, who had been very nervous about the entire idea, was almost too incredulous at the results, as if he were a paid testimonial in an infomercial about my face: "Nora, it looks so natural!" "Nora, you look so beautiful!" He said this even as I performed the somewhat awkward aftercare ritual of gently patting my eyebrows with a mixture of antibacterial soap and water, rinsing them with a cotton pad, and slathering them with Aquaphor until they healed. There was a small amount of scabbing (what a lovely word that is) but because the dye matches my eyebrows, it wasn't particularly noticeable. The biggest bummer? You can't go soaking your face in water while you're healing, so if you're planning a pool party for your kid's birthday and were really looking forward to smoking all the kids in a water slide race? Plan accordingly.
Beauty trends come and go and come back again (which is why all the teens in my neighborhood look like they could be my high school classmates). It's so permanent, people say nervously when I mention it to them, like there is anything permanent about our weak little mortal bodies. Beauty is impermanence: my collagen levels are dropping by the second, two babies have left my boobs two totally different shapes and sizes, my butt has begun it's slide down the back of my legs, and in three years, these eyebrows will have faded away completely and I'll have something new to obsess over.
It's been four glorious weeks since I got my eyebrows back, and I'll have them for about 3 more years, so let's hope that Christina Aguilera brow doesn't make a comeback before then.
You Might Also Like
