Umm...Where Are My Eyebrows?

One of the more annoying effects of alopecia that can develop is a lack of eyebrows. 


When I first started noticing that my normally rather thick brows were looking a bit sparse, I told my mom, but she brushed it off, saying that she couldn’t see a difference. I, who spends probably far too much time examining my face and my scalp to check for hair loss or growth, on the other hand, absolutely knew something was off, and within a few months time, I had a freshly eyebrow-less face. 


To be frank, losing my eyebrows hurt worse than losing my hair. I can rock a bald/shaved head, but without eyebrows? It took a lot of time to get used to this new person in the mirror. 


I started trying to figure out how to do my eyebrows myself, in a relatively un-make up savvy house. Word of advice: gel eyeliner does not belong anywhere near your brows, especially when you are first learning. Wet n’ Wild Khol liner, you did the best you could, you really did. 


After some rather cringe experimentation, I figured out about mid-high school that brow pencils were 1) a thing and 2) looked way more natural than what I had been doing. XX 


For me, I found it was easiest to use the brow pencil to mimic the hairs of a natural brow, and then go back in with a darker color for definition. Then, I would set them with powder and go back over the strokes lightly to allude to that typical brow texture that is really hard to replicate without hair. 


I had thought about microblading, but the thing is, I am both a swimmer and a lifeguard, so I am in and out of chlorine and harsh sunlight all the time - not the best combo for microbladed brows. After my senior season ended this year, my family and I thought about getting them done now, but we quickly decided the middle of a pandemic was not necessarily the best time to do so. 


For day to day interactions with people (i.e. a quick grocery store milk run and the like) you don’t care to impress, I’ve found a hat pulled down low fixes many things.


Losing your eyebrows can be hard, and I feel like it's not talked about often enough in the hair loss community, but there are options - it might just mean getting a little creative with it.

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