Lady Parts: Brow Taming

Lady Parts: A BARB Beauty Series

This Edition: Brow Taming

Covid Quarantine Captain’s Log: Day 51

I’ve gone completely feral. I have a Madison Reed hair color kit on stand by, but I’m holding out to see what is really going on up there on my head. Is this my opportunity to channel the gorgeously silver-locked Helen Mirren or do I tempt fate with hyper-contrast neon roots like Billie Eilish? Both are a treat to imagine and don’t think for a minute that I wouldn’t do one or the other—or both! For now, I’m going to put hair color aside and focus on something that I discovered when I took a pair of sharp scissors to my bangs and starting cutting.

The bangs came out pretty well, actually—more on that in a subsequent post. It’s what I found underneath my bangs that we’re going to talk about here: the brows. After 6 weeks of unchecked growth, the brows are not serving up the face framing magic that my esthetician and brow miracle worker Alexis Benveniste has been providing for more than a decade.

I called a 911 brow emergency and asked Alexis to give us some at-home tips to get us through these dark and hairy times.

STACY: First off, how are you coping during this quarantine? Have you turned into a lady Sasquatch like the rest of us, or have you been able to keep your lady parts all tuned up?

ALEXIS: Aside from wanting to jump out the window when I home school the kid, I’m great! Luckily, I lasered many years ago, so aside from my man legs, I’m ok in the other regions.

STACY: Ok. Let’s get down to brass tacks (or hot wax?). For at home brow taming: tweeze or wax?

ALEXIS: Def tweeze at home unless you are seasoned at waxing yourself! Tweezing allows more shape control and less risk of hurting your delicate skin.

STACY: What tools do we need and how do we prep?

ALEXIS: Best to do after a warm shower or face wash, which opens your follicles and allows for a slightly less painful tweeze. Make sure you have a clean brow brush aka spoolie and sharp angled tweezers. My fave is Rubis. Unless you have insane length, I would avoid using scissors.

STACY: How do we determine what shape to follow?

ALEXIS: I like to start the inner corners directly lined up with the outside of the tip of your nose. Carry the line of the brow to the outer edge of your pupil to find your arch. Be very sparing and only tweeze one hair at a time.

STACY: Any tricks to lessen the pain?

ALEXIS: Post shower or face wash and pull the hair from as close to the skin as possible. This also helps prevent snapping the hair off while pulling.

STACY: Post brow groom treatment?—Aloe, or some skin calming thing?

ALEXIS: I’m a big fan of frozen face globes at work so at home, freezing two spoons and gently rubbing around the area tweezed. Also good for puffiness!

STACY: Now that we have our brows back, any additional things we can do to cute them up even more? (Brush them, gel, brow shape powder, etc).

ALEXIS: Use that spoolie! Brush your brows like you do your hair. They can get messy and look sloppy like bed head. It’s amazing what a little tidying will do. I love brow gel for more coiffed brows, my faves are bunny feather brow gel and boy brow by glossier!

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When it’s safe to leave home, and we actually care about what we look like (or is that just me?), Alexis can take care of all our depilatory needs at her L.A. studio, Bunny Feather. Keep your fur under control for another few weeks (or don’t!) and let Alexis find those brows again. They’re under there somewhere.

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Bonus follow up to our nail tutorial with Kristin Gyimah from Dime Nails!

Here’s Kristin demo’ing the whole dang thing on Dime’s IG

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Follow Stacy on Instagram!

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Recent Lady Parts Posts!

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