When I was 16, I sashayed into the family get-together with what I felt was a face beat to the gods. I was clearly mistaken. My cousin pulled me aside and helped me wipe the gaudy colors off of my face with a makeup pad and whipped out a perfectly sharpened eyebrow pencil. I told her that I already some on, to which she replied: "All you need is a fresh set of brows. You'll look like you're wearing a full face of makeup," and from then on, that rule was law in my eyes.
Over the past few years, emphasis on perfecting the skill that is brow-fleeking has become increasingly important. If you're not quite sure how to get them together, you can easily find hundreds of tutorials on YouTube that will help you get your head in the brow game.
Laid eyebrows on a woman are like a fresh pair of grey sweatpants on a fine man with a large package. F*cking orgasmic.
When I heard that Meagan Good recently announced the results of her eyebrow transplant, I was wildly intrigued. Six months ago. she posted on Instagram:
"My eyebrows are finally coming along after my #EyebrowTransplant! This has been such an eyebrow evolution journey lol, but finally starting to come full circle. Eyebrows like a real little girl. No, but seriously after destroying my eyebrows at age 19, I'm over the moon with these results thus far."
You probably have the same questions that I had when I first heard the news:
"Well, do they use someone else's eyebrows?"
"Is that the same as microblading?"
"Do I need an eyebrow transplant?"
My plan was to get to the bottom of this.
With a quick Google search, I learned that eyebrow transplants, frequently called Brow Restorations, are useful to patients who have over-plucked their eyebrows and have trouble growing them back. I think we can all relate to a time where you, or someone you trusted (in my case, it was my mom), got a little tweezer happy and had you looking surprised for three months straight.
In 2015, the actress opened up about her discontentment with her eyebrows on Facebook and revealed that she had chosen to try permanent makeup as a solution. She wrote:
"As some of you may know, eyebrows have long been a source of contention for me for over the last decade. Not that I don't love mine, but in the late 90s-early 2000s - it was very popular for women to draw their eyebrows on as narrow as possible or in some cases tweeze them to the point of no return. I unfortunately fell victim to this trend, not being able to reverse it. After tweezing my brows, they got to a point where they didn't grow back-at all. I was left to draw my brows with pencil & powder."
Though minor cosmetic surgery, an eyebrow transplant can cost up to $7,500 and has a healing process similar to getting a tattoo. Active hair follicles are grafted from the back of the head or upper thighs and then transplanted in the desired shape and length. Within four to six months, patients can expect to see noticeable results.
The procedure is different from microblading, a semi-permanent makeup process that involves manually inserting pigment into the upper layers of skin. Eyebrow transplants are permanent, unlike microblading that only lasts up to 12 months.
In an Instagram caption posted a few days ago, Meagan said that her journey was finally coming full circle, and it's a fairytale ending that she now has the brows of her dreams.
Many doctors recommend avoiding a transplant if you are just looking for a fuller brow, or if you suffer from medical conditions like alopecia.
Though we may not all be able to spend a stack on brow restoration, here are a few beauty products that will help you keep those brows laid.
Featured image via David Livingston/Getty Images