The voice I hear every-time the tweezers come close to my little caterpillars! This line of advice I received around the age of 14 when I was only starting to think about my personal grooming routine. Because you know high school and boys. Before then I didn’t have a clue how to alter the appearance of what genetics had blessed me with, and I cared more about my friends liking me than I did about obtaining a boyfriend.
Literally for a decade I didn’t dream of plucking above my eyebrows…maybe longer. If I even thought about it, I quickly got so scared and stopped. It wasn’t til 30 when I started shaping my eyebrows not only below but also above.
And you know what…I’m damn fucking good at shaping my own eyebrows!
Also they look BETTER when I take a little off the top!
Was this bad advice? Good advice?
Neither, it was personal advice.
It was a rule she had always applied in her own life because of a personal bad pluck job I’m sure she gave herself when she first started. She had the best of intentions. She was trying to help.
But she didn’t have my eyebrows!
You picking up what I’m throwing down here?!?
I know it seems silly. I mean I’m talking eyebrows. In this day and age nothing a little micro blading can’t fix if you really fuck that shit up…am I right?!? And let’s be honest most of us fucked that shit up in HS because in the early 2000s (yes, I started HS in early 2000s) the pencil thin eyebrows were in. It ruined a lot of beautiful eyebrows. Now that they are not, microblading is restoring eyebrows to their original glory!
Either way, what I’m trying to get at is…a lot of people will give you personal advice. They will be so certain of their personal advice. Say it so matter of factly, you’ll take it as just that…fact. You’ll set your watch by it. Depending on who it is, you’ll live your life by it…for years, a decade, decades, your whole life. You could go your whole life living by someone else’s personal truth they found along the way.
If we are talking eyebrows here no biggie. Honestly my eyebrows have never looked bad, they only look better now. Yet, if the advice you are taking as hard fact. If you are living your life by someone else’s fears, what could you be missing out on. Their fears are not your fears. Their life is not your life.
Take a second…think about that!
Were you put here to live someone else’s life?
What about your parents who wanted you to live a better life than them?
Are you?
What does a “better” life mean?
Maybe it means you have more options for your future.
Maybe it means you’re well-traveled.
Maybe it means you’re more educated.
Maybe it means you get to buy them that house they always wanted. Or the car they always dreamed of.
By all means, those are all great goals. Those literary can make or break generations of trauma and poverty and open more doors than you could imagine for your family’s future.
For some of us though, our parents have the house they always wanted. They paid off their mortgage before you even got to college. Then they paid for that too. Some of you are living exactly by all the rules because somewhere along the way, you thought if you followed the rules, you got the keys to the castle. You believed it gave you everything you could’ve ever wanted. You believed the rules would make you happy.
But maybe for some of us a life of poverty isn’t what we are breaking. Maybe some of us are made to play by a completely different rule book than our parents. Maybe some of us are here to change the fate of our family by not following the playbook handed to us. Maybe to some of us…rebellion looks like happiness. It looks like a life we are choosing and not settling for. Maybe some of us that’s the path we were made to follow.
Maybe that’s privilege. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just struggle dressed up in a different costume. Maybe it’s the evolution of your familial line.
Whatever the rules you’re following or breaking. Whatever path you are choosing to go down, I beg you…just make sure it all belongs to you!
Oh and pluck your damn eyebrows however you damn well please! Worst case...I told you microblading is in your future!
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