I have enough eyebrow stories to write a blog series … which is precisely what I am about to do!
Now before you cringe and skip this entry having convinced yourself that I am about to spout Beauty Advice, please note that these stories contain the customary amounts of humiliation that you have grown to love and expect.
The first story takes place in the summer before grade 8, long before I even understood that eyebrow care was a thing.
My eyebrows were on my face. They grew and did not connect in the middle. They weren’t massive or practically non-existent. They were just there and that was all I needed to know.
At least until that fateful day …
I was 13 and had decided to try Nair for the first time. For anyone who doesn’t know (Does anyone not know what Nair is? Or is Nair even still a thing?) Nair is a horrible chemical that removes body hair and smells like burning rubber. But none of that mattered because I was oh so very grown up and had seen a commercial on TV about this amazing product that removed hair without any mess or fuss (LIES!) and just knew I needed to try it for myself.
So there I was, hidden in the bathroom on a sweltering August day liberally applying hair-be-gone to my legs and sweating profusely in the heat. Finally after coating each leg in twice as much of the recommended dose (assuming that twice as much would make it last twice as long) I stood up and wiped the sweat off my brow, beginning the countdown until I could wash the crap off.
That was when the burning started.
I felt as though I had fallen into an ant’s nest and not even the nice kind that’s just after sugar. No, this was the burning of a fire ant nest, angry and hungry and unbelievably painful. The bottle had said nothing about burning!
I hopped from foot to foot trying to last another few minutes so I could finish what I had started.
And then the burning started on my face.
That fateful brow wipe had distributed Nair directly across my right eyebrow. I rushed to the tap as fast as I could and tried to wash away the lotion as it burned my face, desperate to minimize the damage.
I wasn’t fast enough.
Three weeks before the start of Grade 8 and most of my right eyebrow was gone.
It was not pretty.
It was, in fact, pretty awful.
In a fit of misguided decisiveness I tried to remove some of the left eyebrow to make them more even, as if that would improve things.
It didn’t.
Instead I was left with two oddly shaped and barely-there eyebrows that took months to grow back in. I was teased mercilessly and managed to spend the first few months of my Junior High career looking perpetually surprised and as though I had a very large forehead.
Thus began the start of my eyebrow paranoia, something I carry with me even now.
Post Script: Dear Reader, of course there are pictures of this incident, but the pain is still too fresh to share them. It’s amazing how different a face looks without eyebrows …
My poor eyebrows have not had the attention they deserve like ever. The only time I do anything with them ever is when they are either growing too close to each (unibrow) or one tiny little guy decides to start lifting and takes some steroids and I have to ban him from baseball for a year and he returns back to his own size with the rest of the bros, uh brows.
Good on ya! You need to make sure you keep those errant hairs in line, otherwise they might start a revolt.
My have already revolted. Once I teach them bitterness and laziness though, they will just sit down on their couches and watch TV just like I do.
Bitter Eyebrows will be quite the thing!
Do you think they do that kind of thing at a salon?
Only at the really expensive ones …
I’ll stick with having my wife or me do it. It will be just as bitter.
Brilliant! Soooo been there–I practically plucked both my eyebrows off in middle school, and have had many more eyebrow mishaps since. Now I just let them grow wild and free, untamed. Because I still don’t understand how to deal with them.
I’m pretty sure the decision to start plucking my eyebrows was one of the worst decisions I have ever made. Now they are weirdly misshapen (because I too have no idea how to deal with them) except for once every blue moon where I pay someone to just rip them off my face in a way that looks normal.
Wild and free is definitely the way of the future.
(Or at least the way of my future as I am tired of paying people to hurt me with hot wax …)
Yes!!! 🙂
I”d say that you had a “close shave” but that would be in very bad taste, and having fun at your expense. And not at all fair because, yeah, I’ve had my own nasty encounters with the vile stuff.
Heehee! I snorted when I read your comment 🙂
It’s definitely fun to laugh at now, though some of those beauty stories gone wrong certainly stick with us.
As an aside, I think Nair should be banned! Aside from nasty eyebrow mishaps, it truly is vile stuff.
PS. Thank you for commenting!
Snorting is great feedback! :
Oh lordy, I feel your pain. Reminds me of the time I put hemerhoid cream on the bags under my eyes (supposed to tighten those suckers right up). Must have gotten it too close to my eyes because 3 hours later at work my eyes git red, swollen and burned like I’d been hit with acid! Egad we would have been a pair!!
Oh my gosh that sounds painful!
What a terrible experience. It’s amazing the things we go through for beauty tricks …
Swollen eyes and no eyebrows, we could have been a Super Hero duo! (Or perhaps Super Villains … they do seem to have more fun!)
You’d think natural beauties like us would just let it shine, huh?
I vote for Super Villians 😀
Excellent!
Everyone has at least ONE eyebrow story. I shaved mine when I was five and thought no one would notice. … My aunt penciled them in for me to minimize the embarrassment, but no one has ever forgotten. No. One.
Oh no!
Yes, it’s wonderful how family and friends never let us forget these charming moments from childhood!
At least your Aunt was nice 🙂
I think a collaborative book of eyebrow stories throughout the world would be a hilarious read!
YES!!! I would buy it. That’s coffee table material.
Definitely!
The name “Nair” is believed to be a play on “no hair”. This is incorrect.. The title derives from the word “noir” to reflect the experiences of early product development.
Sounds legit!
I had to wait until the laughter subsided to come back and tell you how sorry (likely how you feel about me at this moment) I am that that happened to you. I’m sure this memory causes you great pain, even now. However, you’ll be happy to know your bad experience provided an amusing read. :@)
I am delighted!
Every time something awkward or terrible happens my first reaction is always “Can I blog about this?” followed immediately by horror and embarrassment.
LOL I believe I suffer from this same malady. Must be going around. :@D
Nair. Oh god I remember the smell. >.<
Isn’t it the worst?
And it always stuck in your nose too! One of those “hard to get rid of” smells!
Girl, I WISH I had eyebrows! I have the blondest of blonde hair so my eyelashes and eyebrows are pretty nonexistent. IN fact, when I was in middle school, I used to color them in with a regular colored pencil, not a makeup pencil, a Crayola Pencil. I know.
That’s creative!
This story is so perfect it’s almost sitcom material. 😀
I tried Nair around that age too, but it never worked…? I left it on the right amount of time but my legs were still as lush as a spring meadow.
Definitely!
It’s such a ridiculous product! Perhaps your legs are particular resilient 😛
Oh nooooo, I totally tried Nair and had a terrible experience too! Definitely burned and only took off like half the hair- that has to be like one of the worst products ever made, after Glade Plug-Ins of course. Your writing style is so funny and gooooooood, I just want to keep reading.
I think it should be banned and the inventors should be forced to use it themselves! (Or is that too cruel?)
Thank you so much for your comment (all of your comments, really). I will be writing more again soon so stay tuned!
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