Everything you’ve been doing to your eyebrows is wrong.
Yeah, that sounds extreme, but bear with me. I, too, was an eyebrow novice. Until I met the guru of men’s eyebrow grooming, Sania Vucetaj. She runs Sania’s Brow Bar, a grooming salon in New York City. And while she started with women, for $75 a pop, a weekly parade of guys sinks into the comfortably masculine surroundings for subtle brow taming that makes them look better, but not overly “tweezed.” Maybe that light touch is why Vucetaj counts celebs like Matt LeBlanc, Anthony Anderson, and Jay Sean among her clients.
If you scoffed as soon as you read the words “Brow Bar,” you probably think all you need to do is pluck a few hairs now and then to make sure you don’t have a unibrow. Right? Wrong. Vucetaj walked us through the mistakes men make, and the disastrous consequences those mistakes can have. From ending up with arched eyebrows to “killing” the hairs and thinning your brows for life, here’s everything you need to know about keeping your brows in check with no regrets.
GROOMED BROWS MAKE YOU LOOK YOUNGER
If you need a reason to think about your brows, consider this: Your eyebrows can get scraggly as you age. Men don’t realize they can cheat just by cleaning them up to lift the eyes.” To that end, Vucetaj tweezes their brows from underneath. (“Never tweeze from the top,” she says.
YOUR BARBER MIGHT BE DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD
Now, you know the right way to tackle your eyebrows is to pluck hairs from underneath. But your barber might be lopping them off from the top – and going too short. “The barber takes a buzzer and trims right through the brow,” Vucetaj says. “It can create gaps, and look hollow and sparse. Also, the way your brows grow out is coarser.” The key to a proper trim: Brush your brows upward and cut just the very tips of the hairs. They’ll sit better, grow back more evenly, and you won’t have gaps.
SHAPE IS EVERYTHING
If you remember one thing, remember this: Men have straight eyebrows, no arches. Period. “A man has got to have a straight, natural brow,” Vucetaj says. “The worst thing a man can do, as we know from Jersey Shore, gives an arch to his brow.”
WAXING? THREADING? DUDE, NO
We’ve told you before that waxing is a no-go, and we’ll say it again: Don’t wax your eyebrows. Your girlfriend might do things to her brows that you should never consider. But when the aim is to look natural, you can’t take shortcuts. “Same with shaving. A lot of guys try to shave their brows in the middle and it goes wrong.”
1 MISTAKE? OVERDOING IT.
So your brows grow together. You have what some might call a unibrow. If you’re going to separate those suckers, do it gently. Don’t exile them to different coasts. “One of the biggest mistakes men make is to tweeze too much in the center of the brow,” Vucetaj says. “If you do too much, it makes your features look wider and your face can look off.” How do you avoid this? Touch the bridge of your nose (the bony part) with your fingers. There you go, that thickness is how much brush you can clear from the middle of your unibrow. No more.
SALT-AND-PEPPER BROWS GO WITH SALT-AND-PEPPER HAIR
Here’s another way to look natural: Don’t pluck all the greys. You’re not going to do that on your head, so why would you do it on your face? “Pull it. But when you pull more than two in the same area, you create holes.” Plus, she points out, eventually, more of your brow hairs will be grey, and you don’t want to pull all of them.
KEEP THEM IN CHECK, BUT KEEP THEM ALIVE
What you do to your brows now can haunt you later – especially if you’re young. “Brows stop growing back as thickly,” Vucetaj says.
In the end, moderation is key. Don’t fuss over things that no one else will see. “Step back from that magnifying mirror,” Vucetaj advises. “No bright light. Let them be. No one is noticing the occasional little stray that comes out.”
