Through thick and thin: the evolution of one woman’s eyebrow journey

Back then I was a dedicated plucker, addicted to the vain art of matching up both eyes — an impossible task for which I carried tweezers in my school uniform purse belt in case of grow-through emergencies. In the end, there was very little left to match up where my characterful slugs once lived.

Our brow idols seemed like rebels: Drew Barrymore’s Hollywood hair-raisers, Gwen Stefani with her pencil-thin, jewel-adorned punk lines. I, meanwhile, was a rip-off Rose McGowan, with eye sockets as exposed as the rest of me. It was a period in stark contrast to the buoyant 1980s before it, a time of bushy Brooke Shields and decadent fullness.

I figure there is some sort of socio-political link between harsh times and reactionary harsh brows. Pencil-thin disco brows responded to the uncertainty of mining strikes and three-day weeks in the 1970s; free love begot free hairs (all over) in the 1960s; in the Forties, arches were stuck rictus high from the fear of blitzkrieg. And so, Brit Pop Nineties was rock’n’roll recession — eyebrows as emaciated as your heroin-chic hipbones.

As the Noughties rolled in, the reference points changed. New Labour: new eyebrows. The skinny lines beefed up around the bridge of your nose as celebrity magazines offered tips on how to shape yours like Girls Aloud. I was left with dark commas barely a hair’s breadth at the ends. I lived in that prison of my own plucking for many, many years.

So when, in 2009, I was strolling round Berlin and caught sight of a breathtakingly lustrous pair of brows on a model I soon learnt was Cara Delevingne, I was astounded there could be another way. I immediately pulled my side-swept fringe across my brow to cover up the grow-back. It took six full months of pencilling in the garage MC-style gap that refused to repopulate. And then, one day, I was full of brow once more. Bar the short, ridiculous Scouse Brow phase, this is how I and the rest of Instagram have comfortably remained, microblading and tufting until the pandemic’s lack of self-care tipped us into castaway territory. It’s only natural that the pendulum swings once more.

‘For the ultimate Nineties-inspired arch, and to achieve a softer look,’ says Power, ‘use Precisely, My Brow Pencil to draw fine, hair-like strokes and highlight the brow bone with High Brow Duo Pencil. ’

So, can I go thin again? Go on, pass me the razor.