Eyebrows can serve purpose

Published 12:59 pm Tuesday, April 1, 2003

A movie magazine said pop diva Jennifer Lopez is accompanied by 20 people, who provide her with special services. Among her entourage are two eyebrow technicians, presumably one to pluck and another to oversee the plucking. That seems to be carrying beauty accouterments a little too far. However, it might be that her eyebrows grow at a breakneck speed, and need to be thinned and made perfect on a daily basis. Maybe she needs a tiny little weedeater to help keep her eyebrows under control.

It is a good thing that J. Lo, as Lopez is called, has caretakers for her exceptional brows. World famous tenor Luciano Pavarotti does not. He has very black, thick eyebrows that look like they were painted on his forehead by a talented chimp. They are crooked, one higher than the other, too close together, and appear to have been doctored to go with his very black hair. He must use a sweat-proof hair product, because he repeatedly wipes his brow with a pristine white handkerchief as he labors hard singing arias from his signature roles in opera.

Pavarotti performed in Portland March 14. His photo in The Oregonian made it clear that his eyebrows continue to thrive and are still uneven and incredibly thick.

Years ago, one of our little kids asked what eyebrows were for. It was a good question for which I did not have a solid answer. What I knew was, eyebrows are often uneven, and very individual. Some people pluck the real ones off and paint on fake ones. Others have their brows regularly thinned. Some folks have their eyebrows dyed to match their hair. Occasionally someone has one eyebrow that grows clear across his/her forehead.

Remember when the gnome books were popular years ago? I distinctly recall that gnomes, men and women, were said to start having coarse, rogue eyebrow hairs at about age 400. Of course, the gnome stuff was fiction, but it is true that around 40, humans start sprouting eyebrow hairs, which are not refined and could never be considered remotely genteel. Some men, particularly, take pride in their wild brows, allowing them to grow hither and thither. There is a man I’ve seen in Salem who waxes and brushes his eyebrows straight up so that they assume a personality of their own.

Eyebrows can communicate. A raised eyebrow can say as much as the sentences implicit in a gesture made with one’s hand. Two friends of mine articulate well with their eyebrows. One of them raises her eyebrow when she is being critical, or when she is telling you the real story. The other is a handsome young man who flirts with his talented and agile right eyebrow. When I speak with him on the phone, I always ask what his right eyebrow is doing. If it is up, that’s a sure giveaway that he is in fine fettle. When his girlfriend broke up with him recently, he told me his eyebrow didn’t move for days.

“It was depressed,” he said, and I say, “This is a silly column.” Cynthia Hilden’s column appears every other Tuesday.