Self-Feminization: Brows

In this post, I continue to write about some of the things I have learned and used to feminize myself.

Uni to Girly

Brows can either make or break your entire look. I had a unibrow when I started to get serious about femulating. I did not have a solid unibrow, but there were enough hairs above the bridge of my nose that it was not very ladylike. So early on, I took a razor to that patch of hair.

In boy mode, nobody noticed that I now had two distinct eyebrows. (Wearing eyeglasses in boy mode also helped to disguise my eyebrow feminization.)

Emboldened, I bought eyebrow tweezers and an eyebrow trimmer. With the tweezers, I attacked the stray hairs and with the trimmer, I shortened any hairs that had grown to unruly lengths. The result was neater and more feminine brows. And in boy mode, nobody noticed.

Further emboldened, I began using the tweezers to thin my brows. I only thinned along the bottoms, never the tops because I had read in a number of places that you should not pluck along the tops of your brows because if you do, the hair will not grow back!

Still nobody noticed, so I kept on thinning and the result was a perfect feminine sweeping curve along the bottom of my brows, while the top was not so perfect.

I was a little frustrated until I visited our public library and took out a book titled Beautiful Brows: The Ultimate Guide to Styling, Shaping, and Maintaining Your Eyebrows by Nancy Parker and Nancy Kalish. The book deflated the advice about not plucking above your eyebrows and said to go ahead and pluck above, as well as below.

Immediately after reading that passage, I dropped the book, went to the bathroom and plucked all the strays above my eyebrows! Now my eyebrows, both tops and bottoms, looked neat and feminine and since then I continued to pluck and thin above and below. (By the way, the hair does indeed grow back above as well as below.)

This is a very tricky business, so take your time and go back and forth between your left and right brows so that they will look alike.

To color and define my brows, I use an Avon eyebrow pencil. Although my natural eyebrow color is light brown, I use a blonde eyebrow pencil because I found that using a brown pencil resulted in a brow that was too dark. Blonde is just right for me, so you too might want to go one shade lighter than your natural brow color.

Using an eyebrow brush, I comb out my brow hairs so they are lined up horizontally and pointing away from my nose.

Next, I sharpen the pencil to a very fine point and draw a line that defines the upper edge of my eyebrow. I start drawing the line above the inner corner of my eye (point A in the accompanying figure), angling upwards to the peak of the arch which is above the outer edge of the pupil of my eye (point B), then drawing the brow out to a point that lines up with my nose and the outer corner of my eye (point C). All the while I draw the line as close as possible to my existing brow hair.

After I define the tops of my eyebrows, I use the pencil to fill in the area below the line where the hair is thin or missing. Then I use the eyebrow brush to brush and even out the color I just applied.

Women generally have higher brow bones than men, resulting in a greater distance between the bottom of the brow and the eyelid. To compensate, use a highlighter to brighten the area under the arch and lift the brow even more.

Any questions? I will try my best to answer them.

Wearing Bebe (Source: Bebe)

Manuel Arte femulates Jane Russell and Frankie Kein femulates Marilyn Monroe in the drag show Faces in Santa Monica, California, 1986 (Source: University of California Calisphere)

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