I BRING news about eyebrows.
Reluctantly, I've become an expert on the subject, penning articles in several prestigious publications (Homes and Eyebrows, Forehead News, Classic Brows, and Which Eyebrow?).
It's in response to a phenomenon. You must have noticed that eyebrows are everywhere. I don't mean on people's faces, I mean in the news and in the malls.
Eyebrows are now something to which we must pay attention. Until recently, it was all news to me. I'd hardly noticed my eyebrows. Never thought anything of them. But women and barbers — an unholy combination if ever there was one — started obsessing about my brows, pleading to trim, pluck or otherwise persecute them.
I shouldn't have been surprised. Lately, I'd become aware of the need to manage hirsuteness of the nose and ear. Not something that need detain one in youth, but this infernal sprouting of inappropriate follicles kicks in as the decades whizz by.
I'd also noticed an eyebrow bar in my local mall. Here, citizens had smocks tied to their torsos and were ministered to by skilled technicians. The women there always gave me funny looks. Probably because I gave them funny looks.
The reason for my funny looking was that I could not believe that respectable citizens would offer themselves to be interfered with thus in full view of other ratepayers. Such gross exhibitionism was spoiling my shopping experience, but the security guards would do nothing, other than putting me in an armlock and marching me off the premises. Again.
But what can one do? Everything I deem insane or anti-social — cycling, eyebrow-mangling, baldness — soon spreads like wildfire among the natives, making me feel left out and alone. As usual.
The latest news from the public prints is that supermodel Cara Delevingne — Mrs Delevingne's lassie — has been credited for soaring sales of eyebrow pencils. Women, it says here, want to emulate her trademark thick, dark eyebrows. That's odd. My studies had indicated that women usually liked making really thin brows, arched up in a quizzical expression. I'd even thought of it myself, to get the scowl off my coupon.
But I'm not risking it. I've started plucking out really wild, stray hairs, if only to stop passing women doing it more painfully, or barbers blundering in to scalp my brow brutally.
I will not, however, be purchasing an eyebrow pencil. That calls for a steady hand.
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