Look Ma, no eyebrows By Helen Townsend

My mother went through hell with her eyebrows. Plucking, numerous depilatory creams, eyebrow pencils, eyebrows dyes were all disasters. When she was a teenager those thin arched eyebrows of the 1930s were all the rage. Hers were lush and thick, so she tweezed away and got skinny eyebrows, albeit lopsided and surrounded by red raw skin. Relief when thick, lush eyebrows finally came back in! She stopped tweezing but nothing grew. Over the years she had almost tweezed those eyebrows out of existence. So she penciled them in. The result? She looked like one of my little brother's drawings. Post menopause they were thick again, but not lush. She was sprouting speckled black and white hairs that grew like strands of wire, impossible to tweeze and impervious to dye. More humiliation came from the fact that the occasional eyebrow hair also appeared on her chin . I told her she should get professional advice from an eyebrow specialist. She didn't know eyebrow specialists existed so I pointed her in the direction of her new local beauty salon. Unfortunately, the two happy girls there were celebrating the opening of the salon with champagne. Okay, she came home with her brows sleeker and they gave her a hefty discount but that was because the eyebrows were different shapes - one went up, one went down. And they were different colors. She kept trying this and that. Her vanity was proudly intact and eventually, failing eyesight meant she was perfectly happy with her eyebrows.


 3,494

I've been a writer forever and have had 22 books published. Now I'm writing short stories and I love it. See them on my website and please comment. I love feedback. And of course short shorts here.

See Helen's profile.

Helen's website.

Subscribe


  • Share this on...
  • Twitter

Flag this story



You might like: