Yesterday I noticed that I have probably started losing my eyebrows. I still don’t really want to be sure. Is it safest to know the truth and then to somehow conveniently ‘forget’ it? Yes, No, maybe.
Having a few less than the typical number of hairs would have been completely acceptable to me: I’m just trying to get by in this world. According to research online, if I’m an ‘average’ person, then I should have approximately 250 hairs in each eyebrow. I’ve learned that a person who has not plucked their eyebrows might have up to an astonishing 1,100. Suddenly, after reading that, I wondered if my own modest eyebrows had 250 hairs. Or 200. Or 150. Or even just 100. (I didn’t like the way the maths was going here.)
As if it were the most normal request in the world, I asked one of my children to please count the hairs in my eyebrows. I spoke quickly and calmly yet in a firm voice, giving the sort of friendly stare I imagine successful people use in awkward situations. When the only complaint I received that this task would “take ages”, my heart leapt with joy. A joy that was as wonderful as it was going to be short-lived. This was to take nowhere near as long as I would wish.
So, the final verdict on my eyebrow situation, for today: my left eyebrow has 89 hairs and my right one has 84. I failed to negotiate any higher figures. At the very suggestion of a second counting session, my beauty assistant simply closed her eyes.
This latest ‘test’ result shows that my body seems to be letting me down, again. It’s allowing unwanted parts such as tumours attach themselves to me, yet very much wanted parts such as my eyebrows fall off. That doesn’t feel like a reasonable trade-in to me at all.
I guess I am going to have to be philosophical about losing my eyebrows? Before they may disappear for ‘good’, then I should try to get to understand what their loss might mean? Did they ever really define me in any way that was actually important? The online article (in Women's Health Mag) suggests that they did. This is based on a book by Mac Fulfer, called ‘Amazing Face Reading: An Illustrated Encyclopaedia to Reading Faces’. It claims that people’s personalities can be categorised by their eyebrow shape. (It wasn’t clear if this was their natural or manicured shape, though this could be irrelevant.)
Seemingly, ‘angled’ eyebrows indicate their owner likes to be right and “strives to be mentally in control, no matter the situation.” In contrast, “straight eyebrows imply that someone is more direct, factual, and logical, thriving on technical details.” Meanwhile “curved eyebrows indicate someone who is people-oriented and needs real-world examples to understand a problem”. There was no mention of messy, mismatched eyebrows that seem to be angled, straight and curved all at the same time – and which then fall off.
The article went on to reveal that without my eyebrows, it will also be much harder for people to interpret my facial expressions. I won’t be as instantly recognisable, not to anyone. Not even to people already know me. In fact, it would be easier for them to recognise me if I had lost my eyes instead of my eyebrows! What?!
Okay, I need to think ahead. I am going to create my own new, future eyebrows, thank you. Much-improved ones. Ones that fit neatly on my face and fit my personality. I am going for the classic, messy, slightly mismatched variety.
And I am going to make sure that everyone I love has the ability to recognise and read my face accurately and instantly – whether I lose my eyebrows (or eyes) or not. Maybe people need to pay more attention to voices and words instead of faces anyway? Yes, I think so. Even my beauty assistant earlier seemed to already realise this. She closed her eyes and said that I looked beautiful to her. Well, that was lovely to hear. I guess from now on I should ‘count my blessings’ not my eyebrow hairs.
