by H. Graciela Dyer

Created on: January 28, 2009

When considering whether to pluck your eyebrows, it's important to remember the words of the circus sword swallower: "Don't try this at home."

At 14, I was desperate to change my appearance in a way that would make me seem more grown up. My options were few, however, since I wanted, at all costs, to avoid calling forth scorn from my brothers, who never failed to comment if I wore a dab of makeup (what's that green stuff on your eyes?), or incurring the wrath of my mother, who refused to let me pierce my ears for fear I should be considered "common". I wanted to do something that would be difficult to reverse and long-lasting. It also had to be free. I wanted so badly to have my ears pierced that I would have gone against my mother's wishes had it not been for the small matter of finding the two pounds seven shillings and sixpence it cost in those days.

That pretty much left my hair and my eyebrows and I was trying to grow my hair (or, to be more precise, trying to avoid having it cut ever again), so the eyebrows won.

One Saturday afternoon, I took my father's stamp tweezers out of his desk, hunted in my mother's best handbag until I found a magnifying mirror and barricaded myself in my room. I believed I had everything I needed to effect a gratifying change on my childish appearance.

First I knelt on my bedroom floor. This was not, as you might suppose, an act of supplication to the goddess of beauty, but because I had no chair in my room to provide the illusion that I was at a beauty parlour. My dressing table had a low-slung surface and my mother's mirror was about 3 "x4" in size. Even with the mirror propped against a book to leave my hands free, and taking into consideration my urgent desire for satisfactory completion of my mission, I knew it was not going to be easy.

One critical glance in the mirror told me that things were worse than I had believed. It was clear that I hadn't embarked on my task a moment too soon. Fine hairs grew in every direction, radiating out from my main eyebrow over the bridge of my nose and between my brow bone and my eye socket. It was all most unsightly and I couldn't wait to get started.

Squinting and crouching, with one ear on the creaks, squeaks and other familiar house noises that told me the approximate location of various members of my family, I plucked away for ten or fifteen minutes, doing my best to create brows of equal size and beauty, and keeping an imaginary conversation going in my head between my real self and my

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