Will eyebrows make a difference?

One way to age is to fight it with a frontal attack on the body--Botox, skin abrasion, and "procedures" that start with cutting the skin away from your face bones or sucking the fat from under your skin with what resembles a vacuum cleaner. I admit that I enlisted for the battle and got my PFC stripe, but I'm coming to the conclusion that it is a war that will not be won and that I should seek an honorable discharge before I get seriously wounded.

Why? It's too much effort for too little return. It's expensive and short-lived and, in many cases, painful. I've had Thermage (radio signals shot into your face stinging what collagen's left into rigid attention), Botox (needles in the forehead and eyes wrinkles to relax the muscles), and Juvederm (bigger needles that push fake collegen into cheek lines and leave big puffy bruises for a week). Some of the stuff is made from horse urine or something else disgusting. The treatments lifted my wrinkles and sags for a bit, but in the end, the only solution is the big bad invasive face lift surgery now that gravity is winning out over skin elasticity.

Instead of war, I've decided to work with what I've got--to paint instead of construct (or reconstruct as the case may be). Like highlighting my hair to easily keep the gray at bay, I am highlighting my facial features. It's all done with a tried and true technique used by sailors and studs for centuries -- tattoos. Only instead of tattooing pictures in empty spaces, I am filling in the spaces that make-up once filled using tattoos.

Why even bother with make-up anymore or permanent make-up (that's what they call these tattoos)? I've been with my husband for 17 happy years? I achieved what I set out to achieve in business and life. And, we've got a plan for retirement that should engage us for some years. One simple reason -- make-up gives me definition and helps me project my personality. Without make-up I am invisible. My face disappears. I am a person who, without makeup, is a person without features. With a make-up free face, friends and strangers often say things to me like, "Are you OK? Have you been sick? You look a bit tired." All my life, I've been a person who "lights up a room". I want to keep it that way, even with wrinkles!

The first step is eye brows. The procedure hurts less than getting an upper lip waxing (yes, mine is blond, but it's still a post menopausal mustache) and takes less than a week to heel). Today, I lost the last of the little scabs and, instead of scars, I have perfectly arched light brown eyebrows that won't disappear when I wash my face or sweat a wee bit.

I love them! Never in my life have I had eyebrows that look like eyebrows instead of misaligned pencil marks over my eyes. How have they changed my face? To quote a friend who saw them, "My but you look happy. What a great hair cut." You can draw your own conclusions, but I think it's the eyebrows that make my hair look so right.

I'm going for the eyeliner next. Imagine sailing this summer and not having to worry about big brown smears around my eyes at the end of the day.

Conclusion -- eyebrows do make a difference. Tattoo make-up doesn't get rid of wrinkles, but helps me look as good as I feel, is not expensive, doesn't torture, and last for years.