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I Have A Tattoo That Raises Eyebrows

As tempting as it was to get a teardrop (until I learned what that meant), I must admit that my face ink is far less gangster than you are assuming. My face tattoo, in truth, is my eyebrows. I had them painted on. Permanently.
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Womans face, close-up
Johner Images via Getty Images
Womans face, close-up

I had my face tattooed earlier this year.

As tempting as it was to get a teardrop (until I learned what that meant), I must admit that my face ink is far less gangster than you are assuming. My face tattoo, in truth, is my eyebrows. I had them painted on. Permanently.

This raises eyebrows. I've been told that I'm vain and high maintenance. That I must really be into myself if I care about the little squiggles of hair above my eyes enough to let a stranger take to them with ink.

Deciding to go through with it was easy. You see, I was a victim of the tadpole brow. I was 15, the year was 1995 and my teenage self was a slave to the fashions, no matter how hideous (I'm looking at you, Kepper pants and Hypercolour T-shirts). Along with the beige baggy clothing came eyebrows that featured a thick, circular bulb at the start, then tapered out to a tragically thin tail -- hence the name.

Fast forward almost 20 years and my brows have never recovered, not fully. I've tried every growth serum known to man (or more likely woman in this instance) and resisted plucking under strict orders from my brow technician. But patchy evidence of my teen years continue to haunt me.

Enter -- feather touch tattooing. 'Feather touch' because the strokes are so very light that they mimic the pattern and growth of natural hair (no block colour in sight). The procedure isn't even done with a traditional tattoo gum, rather a scalpel with several tiny blade heads that 'scratch' the skin before ink (that has been colour matched) is applied.

The whole process takes around two hours, the first of which is spent waiting for the numbing cream to kick in. It hurts (though it should be known that I have a threshold for pain in the minuses). The results are full brows that last around a year.

I spy with my eyebrowed eye... a before and after shot of the procedure in question.

Those who think having such a procedure makes me vain, you're wrong. It saves me time in the brow salon, and time trying to hide my patchy mistakes from the world each day. I can do an early morning gym class without the fear of my eyebrows sweating down my face and can go to the beach without sunglasses the size of side plates.

Everyone makes mistakes. Does that make me a bad person?

Oh, look -- perms are back in!

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