You know how people say “If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it would be…” and it’s always something profound and life affirming? Well if I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it would be “STOP PLUCKING THE BEJESUS OUT OF YOUR EYEBROWS!”
I think thats sorta profound in its own right, isn’t it? I mean I feel like I turned out ok anyway, and didn’t really need any life affirming help, so maybe if I went back I could stop myself from making bald spots in my damn brows!
Seriously though, I think most girls/women of my generation have this issue. For some reason between 1999 and 2006 it seemed like the most important thing in beauty was to make sure there was nary a stray hair on your face.
While this concept still holds true anywhere below your nose (female beards don’t often come into fashion) it’s kind of a really bad idea when it comes to your eyebrows.
Your eyebrows frame your face. They can offset any extreme face shape, they can lift EVERYTHING up, and thicker brows are a sign of health and youth . . . Do you want to find the person responsible for the plucking trend and beat them up yet?
Let’s not dwell in the past though, it’s over now and we can start working on getting those babies back into fighting form. It’s easy enough but you must follow one rule…
LEAVE THEM ALONE.
That is seriously the one and only rule for growing back your eyebrows, and simple as it may seem it can be hard for us pluck-a-holics. So I will bestow upon you the small tricks that have helped me in my eyebrow journey.
First, let’s asses the damage
I must have been crazy, look how skinny the ends are!
This crappy, makeupless, sunburned webcam photo of me is from about two years ago. I took it to show my mom my new glasses (because they were awesome and still are) and it sparked an epiphany. I was like “ok my glasses look great, but they are really calling attention to those patchy messes above my eyes”.
Please note that I’m not saying anything mean about people who have eyebrows naturally this thin, the fact is I was born with full, thick, dark brows so by over-plucking them I made them patchy and uneven.
Something needed to be done. So I made a vow not to pluck one single hair from my brows for 2 months, and I stuck to it. The results were…not great, so I did it for another two months, and so on and so forth.
Nearly two years have passed and I still consider my brows a work in progress, but now I allow myself to pluck the extremely stray hairs. I have also learned a great deal about filling them in properly, which I will share with you as well.
So what have I learned along the way?
1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. And by small stuff I mean those annoying little brow hairs that you want to pluck so bad. Seriously, nobody else sees them. The only time a stranger will be close enough to notice is on crowded public transportation, and in that scenario nine times out of ten you will NOT be the one with the most jacked up facial hair. I promise.
And your friends and loved ones? You don’t realize this but they aren’t picking apart every centimeter of your face the way you are. They love you as a whole, and see how beautiful you are as a whole as well, so odds are they won’t even notice. Come to think of it I would probably share that little tidbit with my past self as well.
2. Learn to fill them in. Filling them in will help in two ways. It will give you a little taste of how awesome they make your face look when they are fuller, and it will also help to hide some of those stray hairs you were so worried about. Eventually those strays will be a part of your brows as a whole (hopefully)
My current brows before and after filling them.
Filling them in makes a huge difference. I like a big old brow, so I fill mine in a lot but even just a little is helpful.
If you are really clueless as to what shape your brows should be, there is an approximate formula
This doesn’t apply to everyone, nor is it a hard and fast rule, but if you are looking for a general guideline the inner brow should line up with the beginning of the bridge of your nose. If you draw a line from the end of the nose bridge through your outer iris, that is approximately where your arch should be. And if you draw yet another line from the end of the bridge through the other corner of the eye, that is where the tail should stop.
If you like them to line up differently, that’s cool too. But if you have no clue where to start, this should help.
For those wondering how on earth to fill them in, here is my “How to fake fuller eyebrows” tutorial
That was actually my first youtube video…can you tell eyebrows are really important to me?
3. Try a growth serum! When I was first starting to grow them I was really impatient, but also really broke. So I picked up this Wet N Wild Mega Lash Serum because it’s really affordable. Did it work? It’s impossible to say because I don’t have anything to compare it to, but it made me feel better! So if nothing else it was a nice placebo effect for five bucks, and it conditioned the hairs and made them behave a little better.
I have heard really really good things about using RapidLash on them. People even say it grew brow hairs where they never existed in the first place. You can find it at CVS, but I recently ordered it through THIS LINK on Amazon because it is a lot cheaper there. I haven’t received mine yet, but I will definitely review it once I have used it for a while.
4. There will come a point where you need to be realistic. Sometimes brows that have been plucked too many times will never come back, and you either have to learn to live with them, or learn to fill them in.
So bottom line…put down the tweezers. I know it’s SO hard but I believe in you. You can break the habit!
I hope this helps, and if you have any tips on how you grew your brows back, let me know in the comments!
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Amen! I’m so excited to find your blog! I also subscribed to your youtube channel! I’m elated that you share a similiar coloring to me, pale with dark features. I love trying new products and learning new tips!
I myself have fallen victim to the sparse eyebrows. I’ve been attempting to remedy this for a couple years. What products do you use to shape your brow? I use the Anastasia Perfect Brow pencil. Sometimes it can look a little harsh! Advice??
I use the Anastasia Brow Wiz in Medium Ash. I think it’s a little easier to use for a natural look than the Brow Perfect Pencil because its harder and very skinny! Sometimes when I want them a little darker I also use a little of the Illamasqua brow cake in Gaze on a very small angled brush, but only very sparingly. If you ever feel like you overdid it try using a brow gel that’s a tiny bit lighter than the hair (for me MAC brow set in Beguile works), it off-sets the darkness and brings some texture back in
Thanks so much for subbing, and reading! <3<3
Hi, Daniel here! I’m trying to get the courage to put down the tweezers. I’m always so freaking obsessed with not having a single stray hair I bet it’s some kind of disorder! Even the little nearly invisible hairs, that I myself can only see by being 1 cm close to the mirror and having a source of light so close to me it makes me sweat, I end up removing. I’m trying to regrow my eyebrows now but it’s really hard to not touch the tweezers. I don’t know what to do, but it seems it really comes down to resisting to tweeze the stray hairs… I’m going to make a vow to not touch in any hair in my eyebrows other than the middle to avoid the monobrow. Wish me luck!
P.s- Your eyebrows look amazing right now!
Hi Daniel! Thank you, they took me a long time but it was worth it!
I know how you feel getting all up in the mirror and tweezing EVERYTHING. I was obsessed for a while too, so I feel your pain lol. It’s so hard to put the tweezers down but just imagine how glorious your newly grown eyebrows will look after a while. Maybe tack a picture of really good eyebrows on your mirror to remind you of your goal! (That’s a bit much but hey, whatever it takes)
Good luck, I know you can do it!
So basically all I’m allowed to tweeze for this to work is the middle and not a single more hair, am I right?
Yep, that’s the idea!
Alright, thanks!
i tweezerd the flick off at the start of my eyebrow how long will it take to grow back??
It really depends. From what I’ve seen everyone is different, but if it was the first time it shouldn’t take too long, it’s usually worse if you have done it many times. If I had to guess though I would say like 6-8 weeks hopefully
How long did take you to grow yours back? Did the hairs come back in sparser and lighter? Also, after what period of time should you consider your situation as “the best you’re gonna get”? It has been almost a year for me…I have been trying to grow out my ends (as some knowledge-less person somewhere in the past must have thought it was a good idea to wax those puppies right off of me without asking…lol)
It took mine around 6-7 months to really grow back. They came in sparser at first, but still very dark. If you’ve been leaving them alone for around a year and you see no improvement at all then it might be the best you’re gonna get and time to learn to fill them in really well. But it’s hard to say because everyones will grow back at a different rate. It really sucks that someone waxed them off! I know so many people that has happened to
but at least there are ways to fill them in!
Good luck growing them in!
thanks the flick is starting to grow back now! but it is growing back thinner and lighter and isn’t attaching onto the rest of my eyebrow. My eyebrows were my best feature and now they have gone because I messed them up. will they grow back exactly the same as how they were before????
It’s hard to say for sure, but I think most likely they will come back the same. It might just take some time
thankyou so much you are so helpful
Omg this just happened to me, when to try this new place and the girl made my eyebrows so skinny i wanted to cry(still kinda want to cry). I don’t like filling in my eyebrows because i usually don”t put makeup on so i feel like it looks funny just to have your eyebrows fill in, but omg i feel sad=/
Oh man, that is a bummer but it will grow in eventually! You can fill them in even if you don’t wear any other makeup, it will still look good. I know it’s a pain if you usually don’t put any on, but it might make you feel better! Don’t be sad, hopefully it will be back before you know it
Yea Im just going to give it sometime, but thank you, you’re super nice
Thank you so much for writing this! I hope it will help
You’re welcome, let me know how it goes!
[...] How to Grow Back Over-plucked Eyebrows! | QuinnFace I myself have fallen victim to the sparse eyebrows. I’ve been attempting to remedy this for a couple years. What products do you use to shape your brow? I use the Anastasia Perfect Brow pencil. Sometimes it can look a little … http://www.msquinnface.com/ [...]
I use the anastasia Brow wiz. It a little bit more stiff than the brow perfect pencil so you can get away with being a little heavy handed without looking like a crazy person, lol. I use the color medium ash.
hey i tweezed my brows….bt now i feel my natural brows were best..will dey grow back d same they were….??:(
I think so! It’s hard to say for certain because there are some cases when they don’t, but I think that’s fairly rare. It will probably just take some time, I wouldn’t worry
I put Vaseline on my eyebrows and they grow back in like two weeks. I have naturally really think eyebrows, so this just makes them extra thick and full. It also increases my growth. This works for me… it’s just a suggestion. I would recommend it if you want to try. I get my brows threaded because it’s more natural end look for me… I got my eyebrows razored that’s why I’m growing them back… I will never razor then again…
Hmm I never tried vaseline, maybe ill try it. I agree about threading though, much better than wax or razor! I usually just tweeze mine myself these days though, since I’m scared of someone else taking too much off! lol
I have areas on both of my eye brows where they have been over plucked, and now they won’t grow back. Other than coloring them in, what is your suggestion to help them grow?
You can try one of the brow/lash serums that I mentioned above, or just try to wait and see if they come back on their own. It could take a long time so try to be patient (i know its super hard) A lot of people say that castor oil and other things like that help them grow back - Personally I think there is very little scientific OR anecdotal evidence to suggest that it works, but it doesn’t sound like it would hurt. You could also speak to a dermatologist and see if something Rx strength like Latisse might help them grow. I know filling them in sounds like a pain in the butt, but it does the trick if nothing else works. Good luck!
Thank you!
How do you feel about Revitabrow?
I’m the same way with the “if I could tell my younger self something”. lol I even tell family and friends that have little girls not to let them mess up their eyebrows. bad thing about my situation is that I live in south Texas where there is a large population of cholas lol…you know..the Hispanics with the sharpie eyebrows..so back in about 2005 when I was in 6th grade I kinda liked thugv
gish boys and they liked the cholas. So what did I do? I made my eyebrows as thin as possible because I thought it would make me loom better..I had beautiful thick eyebrows. I even got made fun of because they were bushy. I even had a unibrow. I would kill for those eyebrows now. I only wish I had bushy eyebrows with the full on unibrow so I could wax or thread and get a perfect shape. I have been trying to grow them out but they just won’t grow the same
thanks for all the advice..in trying to not pluck but its to tempting to gst those strays!
This literally made me LOL! Trust me it’s not a just a south Texas thing, the late 90s in New York had a serious epidemic of sharpie brows. . .tragic! Good luck growing them back, you can resist the urge to pluck! Thanks for the laugh