Why you need to pull back on the brow treatments

If you want your brows on fleek please, please please give them a break. The way to natural looking brows is actually fewer brow treatments.

So here's the thing, eyebrows have been done wrong for years. Firstly, way back in the '90s and even the naughties, we plucked or poor eyebrows into oblivion. No tweezers were too sharp and no eyebrow too thin. We plucked them within an inch of their lives, or even within a millimeter of their lives. Most of us had a thin arch barely two or three hairs thick.

If you were one of the ones who fell into that over-plucking trend there's every chance they have never fully recovered. Now, we are still getting too many brow treatments. Granted, we are much better at shaping them but it's still easy to overdo it.

Luckily, I had a really bad first plucking experience. I say luckily because it scared me off plucking my eyebrows until I was about 18. At a sleepover, when I was about 14, a friend tried to pluck my eyebrows but she took skin. The whole ordeal was very painful and it wasn't worth that sort of pain for less hairy eyebrows. So I went through the rest of my school days with eyebrows that needed some grooming. However, this bad experience meant I made it through the era of over-plucking unscathed. So, I've held onto my original eyebrows. As a makeup artist, I see and correct a lot of eyebrows and it brings me to the conclusion that most of us need to just leave them alone.

I am all for a great brow shaping and a good old tint. However, the message needs to be 'don't over do it'. If you made it out with your natural brows still intact I beg you not to get them done too often and let them be in their natural state from time to time. Try to stretch out the time you leave between professional brow treatments. You should be able to keep your brows tidy in between treatments yourself.

You will most likely be advised to have your brows re-done every six weeks. I really don't think that's totally neccessary. The longer you can leave your brows grow out between treatments the better. You can pluck the odd stray that appears but the rule is - only pluck a hair it if it's on your brow bone and separate or stray from the main brow. Ask your brow artist never to touch the main shape of your eyebrow and rather just tidy the stray hairs at the edges.

How often do you get your brows done?