Give yourself a free face-lift, in the time it takes to cook the roast.
For those of us who can't or won't have a surgical face lift, this is the next best thing. In the following article I will suggest tried and tested ways to take years off your face. I've discovered that these ways work instantly with lasting impact.
Being in the public eye as a photographic (and some times a cat-walk) model, I have to maintain a youthful appearance, even though I am approaching that coming-of-age period in my life. In a previous article about aging (or not aging) I promised that I would come back and talk about how big a role the eyebrows play in our appearance age. This is that follow-up.
Keep Your Face Frame in Shape
A gorgeous picture frame adds beauty and elegance to a photograph. In the same way, your eyebrows (your face's frame) add character and interest to your mug-shot.
Well-kept eyebrows are vitally important to your face, because they can be the difference between you looking "tired and drawn," or "fresh and on the ball." The condition of your eyebrows also drastically affects your appearance age.
By comparison to other parts of your body, they don't need much work, and certainly are not expensive to keep in shape.
Before we start this exercise, let me say that if you've done this:
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You have done yourself a disservice. This is not the look we are after and I would not, under any circumstances, recommend this abuse.
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The above, is what you should aim for; a natural, youthful looking shape, which lifts your face and eyes. The older we get, the lower our brows appear, this is why lifting the eyebrows slightly, naturally gives the illusion of youth.
Here is How You Do It
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We will henceforth use the illustration above, to talk about how this procedure is carried out.
We'll start with the right side, and work through the numbers on the above diagram. We will be plucking in quick succession, (one hair at a time) with the tweezers grabbing the hair from the very root. Do not grab the hair in the middle. You should feel the edge of the tweezers on your skin, just as close as you would, a shaving stick.
- Clean the area we'll be working with, thoroughly. This is to minimise any (very unlikely) infection, but mainly to remove natural oils occurring on the face. Oils can make the tweezers slip, which will cause minor pain and discomfort. We will be working on dry, oil/cream-free, clean skin.
- Place your middle and fore fingers of your left hand between numbers one and two, and pull up that area up as tightly as you can. The tighter the skin, the less pain you'll feel. Notice that number two falls just slightly short of your eye's natural outer edge.
- Do not touch the bulk of the hairs between section one and two, except for neatening up any stray ones that may be lingering out of formation at the bottom. It is very important that if you're neatening up stray hairs above the natural line of the eyebrow, that you do so sparingly. Do not try to do any radical re-shaping at the top, because this can result in hap-hazard growth later on. If there are any problems with uneven growth, simply colour in gaps with an eye-pencil.
- Now, this is the trickier part. If you aren't sure of the shape you want to achieve, I suggest drawing a line with a white eye pencil, before you start to pluck.
Place the same two fingers between numbers two and three, and again pull up and stretch the skin as tightly as you can.
You can choose to pluck the hairs so that it forms a natural arch, or if you like, you can pluck them so that there is a curve at number 2, and an eventual downhill slant towards number 3.
Below is the look I prefer: (an eventual downhill slant).
- Dab a bit of Vaseline or clear mascara to keep the hairs in place for the entire day.
You will notice in the above picture, that the arch is an eventual one. Some people like a sharper curve at number 2, but this is a personal choice. Notice that there's a clean area of skin between my eyes and eyebrows. This is the illusion of the youthful "wide-eyed" look. I use clear mascara to keep the hairs firmly in shape.
I never cut the individual hairs with scissors, because this makes them grow coarse, wide and out of control. You trim your hair to promote growth, you absolutely do not want to trim your eyebrows.
Trouble Shooting
It's harder for some people who have problematic eyebrows like this one.
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I have a way of solving this. First of all neaten up the bottom areas between numbers 1 and 2. Remove the rest of the hair at the bottom, between the scar and number 3. We will now use dark eye pencil (or powder) to colour in the rest of the space (this is where our childhood colouring-ins come in handy). Let me demonstrate.
There is a scar between the two brown pencil marks. I would remove all the hair below the pick arched line, then work with powder or pencil to colour in the space between the two brown lines. This way, you have natural looking eyebrows made up mostly, of actual hair. You can do this with almost any eyebrow. It's really not difficult.
Now take a look at this picture.
I don't know if you can see it clearly, but I've left all the hair from number 1 to 2, (neatening up only the stray hairs at the bottom) and have plucked off the rest from number 3 to 4. This was for a special occasion, where I wanted to get a more pronounced "lift."
I then used a dark eyebrow pencil to colour in the rest of the eyebrow, which is the effect you see in the first picture I took for my agency last year (with me wearing the red top). This puts my eyebrows a fraction higher than they would normally be (even though it's only the latter part of it) with the advantage of actually still having hair, where hair is supposed to be.
Caution to Younger Girls
It is important for teenage girls not to mess with their eyebrows too much. My suggestion is to leave it be until you're about 25 when you actually do need to pluck. Remember if you start plucking and shaving (which you should never, ever do to your eyebrows) too early, by the time you're in your mid-twenties, your eyebrow hairs are so coarse and bushy from constant plucking, that they make you look much older than your years.
Leave young, fine eyebrow hairs alone, all younger girls need is a bit of Vaseline, or clear mascara to keep their eyebrows in place.
