If you’re like me and got your hands on a pair of tweezers at the age of twelve, you’ve been struggling to recover from the hack job ever since. It was the nineties, and unfortunately for me, pencil thin brows were the look, a la – Drew Barrymore and Pamela Anderson – and I decided that I had to sport it. I nearly plucked everything away, but a barely visible single line of hairs. My precocious middle school self kept saying to my reflection, “Girl, you look FABULOUS!” #smh.
It has taken almost two decades to resuscitate my brows and they still need a lot of help. Granted, they weren’t spectacular to begin with; I was given rough tools to work with- wide, sparse, rectangular shaped boy brows. The regrowth period felt futile. Hairs kept coming in at random locations and I couldn’t live with strays so I was constantly plucking or reshaping.
Finally, I looked into methods to assist my attempts to regrow thick eyebrows. I tried Rogaine first – yes, the stuff old men apply to their balding heads. It did nothing. Maybe it just prevented my current eyebrow hairs from falling out?
My next move was a little more advanced, or so I thought. I was able to get a prescription from my dermatologist for Latisse. I had great results using it on my eyelashes, except for the dark staining it caused under my eyes (anyone else experience this?), so I figured, why not put it on my eyebrows. Instead of encouraging new hair follicles to sprout, Latisse made my current eyebrow hairs really long! Not quite what I was hoping for…
I gave up on regrowing thick eyebrows and ended up getting my eyebrows tattooed. Yup. I did that. Luckily, for me, the tattoo was semi-permanent and has faded after three years. I decided against getting them redone and to look into hair regrowth serums instead – I mean, technology must have advanced, right?
Yes, yes it has.
One of the latest eyebrow regrowth serums to come to market is Peter Thomas Roth’s Brows To Die For Duo Treatment; a double sided silver tube containing a day and night treatment.
The nighttime solution dispenses via a small brush similar to a liquid eye-liner brush, enriched with active peptides prolonging the health of brow hairs. The daytime solution comes in the form of a tinted brow gel applied with a mascara wand. The dark brown gel contains the brand’s patented Tri-Phase Active Complex supporting the three stages of the hair growth cycle, promoting – retention, activation and regrowth.
Now, I read the instructions, “one side for daytime use and one side for nighttime,” but my ‘results now’, impatient self decides to use the nighttime treatment day and night, in addition to using the daytime solution. Did it enhance the results? I think so!
After two weeks of religious daily use, small baby hairs have sprouted near the inside corners of my brows, underneath and on top. Regrowth has started to thicken the brows all over, including areas that haven’t seen new hair follicles in years. I am very excited to say the least.
I recommend holding off on waxing, threading or plucking while you regrow brows. Allow them to naturally come in. The end results are worth living a couple of months with a few stray hairs.
Struggling to regrow your eyebrows? Share your stories with the BOND EN AVANT community below!
-by Amy Chang
Photographed by author
