November 14, 2017 by Amy
Face Fur
Today’s question is an odd one: do you have or like facial hair?
So, in a nutshell: no. I neither have, nor do I typically like, facial hair. But it’s more complicated than that. Because of course it is.
In regards to my own facial hair, I have a distinct lack of it. And not necessarily in a good way. You see, I am, shall we say, follicularly challenged above my eyes. In layman’s terms: my eyebrows suck. They’ve never been great, but as I age, they’re getting even worse. My eyebrows, when I was younger, were too wide. Notice I did not write “thick.” They’ve never been thick. Thick would give me something to work with. Instead, my eyebrows have always been sparsely populated over a wide geographic area. This is not a good combination. Then, because my mother was a beautician and because I grew up in a family of estheticians, I was tweezed and waxed into oblivion. This, of course, took care of the wide geographic area. This, of course, was in the 1990s when the trend was to have pencil thin brows. Unfortunately, they have never recovered. However, I have yet another issue. I’ve had several people in the spa industry inform me, and not too gently I might add, that my eyebrows are not long enough, either. Apparently they stop far short of the center of my face. I have the opposite of unibrow. I have zerobrow. Nadabrow. Nobrow. Nothingbrow.
The first time this was pointed out was during a waxing demonstration where the esthetician doing the work stated loudly and clearly – and matter of factly and mercilessly – that they were defective to a whole crowd of people gathered around staring at my face. This was a good lesson to never volunteer to be a human guinea pig. “You see, of course, that her brows are far too short. Ah, well. There’s nothing to be done for that, except to use a good filler.” This was the first time that anyone had ever pointed out that my eyebrows were in even worse shape than I had realized, so I simply smiled weakly and acted like of course I knew that I was screwed in the eyebrow department. I mean, duh. They’re right there on my face, so how could I not know how short they are?
It seems that as I age, my eyebrows are getting even more sparse, and even more light. In fact, without help, it looks as though I have no eyebrows at all. I think my eyebrows have gone gray despite the fact that the rest of the hair on my head is holding up okay. And the left one is totally jacked because I sleep mostly on my left side and years of pressure to that one brow means it’s given up even trying to be normal.
So I am forced to pencil in. This should not be a big deal, except that in addition to being challenged in the eyebrow department, I am challenged in the make-up department. Or rather, in the giving-a-shit-about-makeup department. I want to spend as little time as humanly possible applying crap to my face to make myself presentable. This does not bode well for my eyebrows, as crafting beautiful brows takes patience. And a willingness to do it. Right now my goal is simple: avoid looking like a clown. Anything other than that is fine with me. So every morning I sit down, take a deep breath, and try to pencil something into existence so that it doesn’t look obvious that I have essentially drawn on my face with a dark brown pencil. Some days it goes okay. Other days, well, let’s just say I finally give up and hope that anyone I meet will be kind and remember the old adage about saying nothing at all.
So that’s my face. Let’s talk about others. Or specifically, the face on the man in my life.
M has wonderful eyebrows. In fact, I’ve always been quite jealous of his brows and his lashes. And he has a thick thatch of black hair covering his head, which I also love. However, he cannot grow a beard to save his life. This is more than okay with me, as I prefer a clean-shaven look. Once, when he was between jobs and interviews, he decided to let his beard grow. He went several weeks without shaving. At best, he looked like a hobo. Random bare patches in his beard mean it’s just never meant to be. I do like when he looks a little scruffy, which is good since he doesn’t seem inclined to shave every day, but after a few days he’s gotta take to the razor. His beard, what there is of it, grows in so rough that it’s like being kissed by a cactus. Even Zoe starts griping at him to shave. No one wants rug burn from a peck on the cheek.
Now, there are definitely some men who look better with a beard. Jonathan Frakes (Commander Riker from Star Trek TNG, which we’ve been watching a lot of lately…helloooo Commander) is an excellent example. Daniel Radcliffe. Jake Gyllenhaal. A beard makes Justin Timberlake look older than 12, so that’s good. My favorite bad guy of all time, Sean Bean, looks way better with a beard. But my favorite awesome guy of all time, M, definitely looks better without a beard, so I am set.
In a nutshell, I wish I had more facial hair above my eyes, and I wish M had less of it on his chin and cheeks between shaves. But other than that, we’re good. In the meantime, I’ve signed up for the eyebrow transplant list, so all I have to do is wait for the call.
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