She’s Got Frida Kahlo Eyes

My eyebrows used to make me look like Frida Kahlo long before it was cool to look like Frida Kahlo.  I hated my eyebrows.

I didn’t pluck my eyebrows so much as clear-cut them like a lumberjack on cocaine.

I practically needed a chainsaw to tame my dark, bushy brows.  And they spread out across my entire forehead like some creature extending its claws.

Peering into my makeup mirror every morning, I saw two woolly beasts running freely across my face.  I would always miss one or two strays and later spot it at work or school waving like a flag planted on newly discovered territory.

But one day in my 50s, they became manageable.  I didn’t have to spend an hour or two hunting down the mavericks.  They stayed

pretty much where I herded them.  I was almost happy with them.

Then the lone gray hairs suddenly sprouted, thicker and stronger than any I had seen before.

“We need to dye your eyebrows,” my hairdresser announced one day.  Life after 50, I was discovering, is just patch, patch, patch.

One day not too long ago, I feathered my eyebrows only to discover a blank spot.  Some beasties had run away and never come back.  Son of a biscuit!  My eyebrows were disappearing!   

Not fair!  I silently screamed.  How could I go from Frida Kahlo to Joan Crawford?

Do they do hair transplants for eyebrows?

A festival of bad words erupted from my mouth.  The dogs moved quickly away.

Now I tend to my eyebrows like a zookeeper with an endangered species.  I do a complete risk assessment before plucking one strand. My hairdresser clucks in sympathy when she dyes my remaining beasties.

The new ones that do spring up twist and turn like broken bedsprings.

I hate my eyebrows.