Na­dine John­son

Of­ten over­looked, the eye­brows are one of the most im­por­tant fea­tures of a woman's face. The brows frame the face and com­plete your look; they can al­so soft­en your ap­pear­ance or make you ap­pear harsh. If not shaped cor­rect­ly, they can make you look old or out of style.

Bi­o­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing, eye­brows are there to pro­tect the eyes by keep­ing sweat and oth­er liq­uids from rolling in­to the eyes, but women have dis­cov­ered the ben­e­fits of aes­thet­i­cal­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ing the brows. But what should a per­fect eye­brow look like? If you held up a ruler, the anatom­i­cal­ly per­fect brow would start par­al­lel to the edge of nose, the arch would be di­ag­o­nal to the end of cornea and the tip would an­gle of end of eye. So, you may not have been born with the per­fect brows, but when it comes to tack­ling your own brows on a day to day ba­sis you have sev­er­al op­tions, which I will list here:

SHAPE THEM

You can shape your eye­brows, es­pe­cial­ly if you have thick heavy ones. Just chang­ing the shape will give your whole face an 'up­lift'.

FILL THEM IN

Maybe you are like me. I am blessed to have brows that are shaped by na­ture, but from time to time they can look like they are miss­ing a hair or two. In that case I use pen­cils or brow pow­der to fill in the miss­ing space.

CRE­ATE NEW ONES

Some­times due to stress, age, med­ica­tions, med­ical ail­ments like alope­cia or ac­ci­dents, many women end up with sparse or non-ex­is­tent eye­brows. In that case you will have to cre­ate an eye brow to com­plete your make­up look. This can be done man­u­al­ly or by us­ing sten­cils. Nowa­days one of the newest trends is per­ma­nent eye­brows where the eye­brows are tat­tooed in.

Beau­ty Tools of the eye­brow trade

To achieve great look­ing brows, you may need all (or a com­bi­na­tion of) the fol­low­ing:

Eye­brow Pow­der This looks like a mat­te eye shad­ow. I per­son­al­ly like us­ing brow pow­ders be­cause they give a very soft and nat­ur­al look. It is usu­al­ly ap­plied with a small an­gled eye brush. Note that the an­gled eye brush is the best to use to fill in the eye­brows. It is typ­i­cal­ly a lit­tle stiffer than an eye shad­ow brush but can be used to pre­cise­ly ap­ply prod­uct to the eye­brow.

Eye Mark­ers These look like mark­ers ex­cept they are specif­i­cal­ly made for the eye­brows. The pros? Many of the eye­brow mark­ers are long wear­ing. The cons? You have to learn how to use them. How­ev­er, once you be­come pro­fi­cient, they are quite con­ve­nient.

Eye Pen­cils This is the orig­i­nal tool to de­fine, dark­en and shape the eye­brows. Some peo­ple like pen­cils be­cause they are easy to use. You get the best and most nat­ur­al re­sults when you ap­ply the eye pen­cil in short, hair like strokes as op­posed to draw­ing a sol­id line. When you draw a line it looks just like that - a line and not an eye­brow.

Eye­brow Gel Con­sid­er this as hair gel for the eye brows. It's typ­i­cal­ly sold in con­tain­ers that look like mas­cara, and they can be clear or coloured. Us­ing gel helps pri­mar­i­ly to keep the brows in place and al­so helps tame un­ruly brows.

Brow Sten­cils For peo­ple who are new to eye brow fill­ing, you can "cheat" by us­ing eye­brow sten­cils which are ba­si­cal­ly a plas­tic shape of an eye­brow which would al­low you to es­sen­tial­ly draw a per­fect eye­brow.