Eyebrow Know How

What to do if you've made a tweezing blunder.

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We’ve all been there. One minute you’re tweezing a few rogue hairs from your eyebrows, the next, you’ve got two misshapen arches and a good reason to avoid going out in public. So what’s the trick to grooming perfect brows — or fixing them if you’ve gone pluck-happy? We tapped two local experts to find out:

Tamar Karakozian, an esthetician at Naz Kupelian Salon in Lexington, points out that no one has a perfectly symmetrical face — or brows. “When you’re looking at your eyes in the mirror, one is always higher than the other,” says Karakozian. If you’re tweezing at home, you should pull only one or two hairs out at a time before stepping back four or five feet to look at your entire face — that way you don’t risk going overboard right away. Karakozian also emphasizes the importance of not tweezing every day. Not only can it cause ingrown hairs, but because hair grows in cycles, you’ll constantly have regrowth. Karakozian recommends letting brows grow for a full three or four weeks between grooming sessions.

Dana Chasen of Beauty Muse Bridal, a makeup and eyebrow-sculpting maven who has styled arches for Michael Phelps, Ivana Trump, and Bethenny Frankel, says that one of the biggest mistakes people make is using too-dull tools. Chasen recommends Rubis slanted-tip tweezers. “The best way to aim for an even shape is to remove hairs row by row, removing a few more hairs for definition at the brow’s natural arch, which should be just beyond the iris of your eye,” says Chasen. “Unless you’re just cleaning up a few strays, avoid removing hairs from the ends of your brows, as it can be easy to make brows too short by mistake.”

And if you botch one, or (gulp) both brows? Both Karakozian and Chasen suggest letting them grow back before seeing a professional for waxing, tweezing, or threading — initial regrowth can take up to 6 weeks, while a whole new brow can take a few months to come back in full. Consider using an eyebrow pencil or powder combined with a growth serum — Chasen suggests Rapid Lash, which can be found at CVS.