I don't get it.

Forgive me for a bit of a rant, here, but I just don't get it.

What is it with women's painted eyebrows these days?

Women have been painting their eyebrows for a long time.  My mother used to do it.  That's because she really didn't have eyebrows.  She was a dark haired woman with sparse, light haired eyebrows.  Hollywood starlets used to paint fine arcs, and that's kindasorta come back.  What on earth for?

I can't figure out the weird painted eyebrows I'm seeing more and more of these days.  These are the chunky, blocky, stencilled things.  I didn't realize stencils were used, or even existed, until I picked up a recent Avon catalog and saw some.  The write up described removing any hairs outside the stencil shape, appling the stencil, then filling in the shape completely with makeup.  Today I followed a link to an online fashiom magazine - I normally avoid fashion magazines - and there was this model with stencilled in eyebrows.

They looked like painted on mustaches.

Groucho Marx mustaches.

Over her eyes.

It didn't help that the thickest part was drawn well towards the bridge of her nose, looking like she's had a uni-brow, but someone erased a space in the middle.

How is this attractive?

Then there are the shavers.

Why would anyone shave off perfectly good eyebrows so that they could pencil in fake ones?  In odd shapes, no less.  I once saw a woman on the bus with eyebrows painted on where no eyebrows would possibly grow.  Her natural browline, devoide of hair, was completely ignored in favour of this weird, clown-like arc that went half way up her forehead at its highest point.

I realize I'm blessed with well shaped eyebrows.  How I managed that, with my mother's non-existant ones and my father's bushy visors, I have no idea, but all my siblings and I have pretty normal eyebrows.  No stray hairs growing in weird places.  No unibrows.  Still, according to fashion, I should be plucking, threading or waxing them anyway.  Then painting them.  Screw that! 

I'll save my eyebrow painting for Halloween.