Arch Rivals
Your eyebrows are one of your most important features, and it’s time to get them into shape.
As any woman worth her tweezers knows, eyebrows frame your face, and they can either make or break your look. Correctly shaped and maintained, they can make you look years younger but droopy, thin or poorly shaped, and they can add on another five years to your face. So how can you decide what’s the best look for you?
“Your eyebrow shape depends on your face shape, eyes, age and personality,” says Joey Yeung, manager of Nu Waxing Workshop. A round face can’t wear thick, straight brows; they need to be thinner and slightly arched. A square face should have rounder brows, and a heart-shaped face should have higher-arched ones.” For most people, a high arch with brows that are neither too thick nor too thin will help to lift your eyelids and make the most of your eyes. Achieving the perfect shape is difficult to do yourself, so consider enlisting professional help by getting your brows waxed or threaded, giving you a perfect shape that you can maintain at home.
Thread it Out
Kala Thapa, Spa Manager at Sense of Touch on Hollywood Road, suggests threading for clients with fair, sensitive skin. This ancient Middle-Eastern hair removal practice uses twisted cotton threads to catch and pull the hair from the root. According to Thapa, “when you wax, a thin layer of your skin comes off with the waxing, but with threading, only the hair is extracted.” Most of her clients prefer threading over waxing, because it’s precise and sometimes lasts longer than waxing does. Also, it’s less painful and irritating to the skin than waxing, which can often cause redness and tenderness around the eye area.
Wax Factor
Waxing, although a tad painful, rips the hairs out from the root, which thins hair and slows down the regrowth process. Wax specialists these days tend to opt for the gentler hot wax, which dries directly onto your skin, rather than painful cold wax. If you have uneven or differently shaped brows, waxer Yeung says that two or three waxing sessions with a professional eyebrow shaper should leave your brows in a perfect shape.
Tweezing Tips
Follow the natural shape of your eyebrows as much as possible to prevent an artificial look.
1. Judge where your brows should start and finish by taking a long eyeliner pencil and holding it straight up, from the outside of your nostril to the start of your eyebrow. Anything that grows over that line towards the middle of your brow should be plucked away.
2. Judge where the arch of your brow should end by tilting the pencil and aligning it from the corner of your nostril to the outside corner of your eye. Your eyebrow should meet the pencil.
3. Pluck hairs in the direction of growth, above and below the brow, and stop every few hairs to inspect.
4. If your brows start at a lower height to where they finish, then pluck a few hairs from the inside of the brow to lift it higher. Having brows that start lower compared to where they finish make your eyes look droopier and older.
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