I never realized I had eyebrows until I turned 40. I just never gave a s*** if the hair on my forehead was groomed. Thinking about it now, that explains why so many people stared at my forehead when I talked to them.

(You might think this is Frida Kahlo. You are wrong. It’s my high school graduation photo.)

Anyway.

A friend mentioned she needed to get her eyebrows waxed.

“Wha?” I responded. “Do real, non-celebrity people do that?” She looked at me (well, at my forehead) like I’d grown a third eye (but it was covered by my uni-brow).

I’d never even considered tweezing, waxing, brushing, powdering or trimming my furry brows. I just assumed they groomed themselves when they wrapped up in their tiny cocoons for the night.

But her comment got me thinking–and looking in the mirror. My brows scattered above my eyes in several directions with no discernible arch, no defined color and obviously no life goals. It was like watching a bearded hippie crash on my couch.

So off to the waxer I went to get them browbeaten into shape.

I tried not to take offense when the waxing professional saw me and gasped like she’d just witnessed an alien abduction. “Settle down, woman,” I said. “They’re just eyebrows. Lots and lots of eyebrows.”

She placed me in a chair/torture chamber and proceeded to wax the hair off two-thirds of my face, oblivious to my screams and curses. Several people walked into the salon, only to quickly walk back out after my blood curdling shrieks destroyed their ear drums.

When the waxer/torturer was done, she wiped the sweat off her (beautiful) brow and handed me a mirror. I cringed in horror. My face was bright red, with several layers of skin missing in some places, and tiny beads of blood on my eyelids.

But my eyebrows!! They looked amazing! They were sleek and styled, and I suddenly looked, oh, so cosmopolitan. I felt like I should be holding a martini glass in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other.And my eyes!! They looked so much bigger once she’d removed the shrubbery from my eyelids.

I waltzed out of the salon, feeling the breeze on my forehead for the first time in ages. I made it a point to raise my brows as often as possible. (I’m sure people thought I was super-surprised.)

Since then, I’ve tried to keep my eyebrows under control, but because I’m lazy, I sometimes revert to my brow-negligent ways. But I haven’t had to use barrettes to keep them out of my eyes. So that’s definitely an improvement!