Fashion | Eyebrows: Fill 'em in, Fake it, or Shake what your Mama gave ya?

I grew up blind to make-up, fashion, and my appearance in general. I remember the first time my mother plucked my eyebrows when I was in high school. She came into my room, sat on my bed with tweezers and a cold, wet wash cloth in hand. I hesitantly laid my head in her lap as she proceeded to pluck one tiny, misplaced hair out - I then shrieked in agony, and she waited while I held the damp cloth on my brow bone for as long as it took for the horrific pain to subside. Then she'd pluck another hair. My sweet mother was painfully teaching me the value of well maintained body hair - a well coiffed brow. a manicured face. a closely mowed eye lawn.

Eventually, I became better at this process and started to do my own plucking. It probably had something to do with the fact that my beautiful big sister complimented my brows one day, saying they had the “best arch" and she "wished hers were more like MINE."

That was it. My obsession with eyebrows had begun.

The love affair continued through college. Until one day, I was getting a pedicure with a friend. The nail tech began talking to us about eyebrows; he wanted to wax them. My friend said she didn't really want to get hers waxed, and I confidently boasted that I "did" my own.

To which the man frankly replied, "Oh...that's what happened…."

Years of self-assurance in my eyebrows' natural aesthetics--as well as my own ability to groom them--was gone with one offhanded but honest comment.

Thanks to some positive thinking and self-actualization, I recovered from that - and now, years later, I am much less concerned with my brows. But I have moved to Nashville, and this town has something serious going on with its eyebrows. It seems to be the en vogue thing to pluck them (I assume) and then draw them back on in a much darker, richer color, in a more dramatic (less realistic) shape. I have found this odd yet strangely appealing. I was not privy to the fact that people even "filled in" their eyebrows until about a year ago. Since then, I have dabbled with a little filling in - making them darker and fuller around that "killer arch" of mine. A few times I have gone too far and made them very black (which doesn’t match my "brown with auburn hues" hair) and then gone somewhere in public knowing I don't look quite right and being assured of it by the puzzled stares I receive.

Nonetheless, seeing all of these brave Nashville women who have dared to remove facial hair that plays a surprisingly large part in what they look like, I have become very interested in people's experiences with their brows. It's so much more vast than a careful plucking or a good waxing these days - some of you people are creating art in place of your brows!

What’s going on with eyebrows? What are you doing (or not doing) with yours? What’s happening in your town? Whatever happened to Grace Jones - and do you think she started this eyebrow craziness?