My niece sent me a photo last week. She was wearing low-rise jeans and a tiny cardigan, her midriff out, looking effortlessly cool in the way that only eighteen-year-olds can pull off without appearing to try. "This is giving so much," she texted. I stared at the photo for a long time. Then I texted back: "I lived through this the first time."
She sent a skull emoji. I think she meant it kindly.
Here is the thing nobody prepared me for about getting older: every look I survived in my teens and twenties is coming back, presented as fresh, targeted at my niece, and accompanied by the specific nostalgia-grief of knowing I did this already and it was, in hindsight, a choice.
Most of these things I can watch from a comfortable distance. The low-rise jeans, I can just not wear. But the eyebrows? The eyebrows are personal.
A Brief History of What I Did to My Face
In 2002 and 2003, I plucked my eyebrows into thin, high arches in the manner of every magazine, pop star, and mall-photo-booth aesthetic of the era. This was correct behaviour for the time. Everyone was doing it. We were all doing it. We were all wrong together, which is its own kind of community.
The problem — the thing no one told us — is that eyebrow hair doesn't always come back. The follicles, traumatized and overworked, sometimes decide they're done. You pluck aggressively for long enough, and what you're left with is a permanent, faint suggestion of where your eyebrows used to be.
I spent years filling them in. I have owned every brow product the market has produced. I have watched so many tutorials that I could write a dissertation on the difference between microblading and nano brows. I have, at various points, drawn on eyebrows with a pencil, a pomade, a fibre gel, and something called a "brow stamp" that I want you to know I bought with genuine optimism.
"The brow stamp did not look like eyebrows. It looked like two identical brown rectangles that had been placed on my face by someone who had heard eyebrows described but had never seen a human face."
What Works Now That Didn't Exist Then
Here is the good news, finally: it's 2026 and there are actual solutions. Brow lamination can reshape and lift what you have. Microblading fills in sparse areas with hair-like strokes. Tinting can define lighter brows without a daily pencil. A good esthetician can look at your actual face and tell you what treatment will work for your specific brow situation — and your specific face shape — rather than whatever a tutorial designed for a 22-year-old recommends.
I went for a consultation about six months ago, mostly because I was tired of drawing on my face every morning and having it be slightly different every time. The esthetician looked at my brows for about thirty seconds and said: "You've still got good bone structure here. We can work with this."
I nearly cried. Not dramatically. Just a small, private, twenty-years-in-the-making tear of relief.
The Larger Point About Trends and Faces
What I've come to understand, roughly thirty years into having a face, is that trends are made for the general population and faces are specific. What looks "right" in a magazine or on your niece depends enormously on the actual proportions of the actual face in question. A professional can bridge that gap — not by making you look like a trend, but by making you look like the best version of yourself.
The low-rise jeans, I will probably not revisit. But I am cautiously optimistic about my eyebrows for the first time since approximately 2001, which feels like progress.
Claim Your Free SpaPass
Let a real esthetician help you figure out what works for your actual face — not just whatever's back in style.
Claim My Free SpaPass →My niece, for the record, has beautiful natural brows. I have told her to never touch them. She said "okay, Auntie." I have to hope she means it.