How to Properly Tweeze Your Eyebrows

Women endure numerous painful tasks, all in the name of "beauty." Tweezing our eyebrows certainly falls into that category, but the following tips will not only explain how to determine the correct shape of your eyebrows, but also list ways to make this job a little less painful.

First things first- time to gather up the tools needed for the job. You will need to have a brow brush or a comb, a pencil or ruler, and most importantly, tweezers. There are tweezers available for purchase that are designed specifically for eyebrow tweezing, and I suggest spending the extra money for these tweezers; they will make the process less painful.

Before you begin, wash and exfoliate your face, concentrating on the area around your eyebrows. Removing any dead skin around the area you will be tweezing will reduce the potential for painful in-grown hairs. Another tip is to apply moist heat for approximately 5 minutes before tweezing to open the skin pores, which will help with reducing pain.

To determine the correct shape your eyebrows should have, use a pencil or ruler as a guide. Rest a pencil along the side of your nose so that it also aligns with the inside corner of your eye- this will mark where your eyebrow should begin. Align the pencil with your nose and outside corner of your eye to determine where the end of your eyebrow should fall.

The "arch" of your eyebrow is probably the most important part to shape correctly. Having a properly aligned arch makes your face look open and clean. The area of the arch should fall over the iris, or colored section of your eye, and the peak of the arch should line up directly above the pupil.

Once you have your guidelines of how you will be shaping your eyebrows, it is time to begin the actual tweezing process. I won't lie to you- this process is painful! To reduce pain, pull skin taut as you tweeze, and pull close to the root in the direction of the hair growth. If you really cannot stand the pain, you can apply a baby teething gel, such as Orajel, to the area to numb it first.

When in the process of tweezing, pull only one hair at a time to reduce the chance of over-tweezing; bald spots are difficult to cover! Take breaks to step back from your mirror and look at the shape you are creating, and compare one side to the other to make sure they are even. When you are finished, you can soothe your skin with a cotton ball soaked in witch hazel.

To remove some of the guesswork as to the shape of your eyebrows, you can go to a salon to have your eyebrows professionally tweezed or waxed so you will only be responsible for the upkeep of the brows. Tweezing should be performed every few days to maintain the shape of your eyebrows. After you have been tweezing for a while, you will notice that it is not as painful as when you first started, and it will become easier to maintain the correct shape.

When you stop to think about it, we do some strange things in the name of beauty, and tweezing our eyebrows is no exception. With these tips, however, you can take some of the sting out of this process, and learn how to correctly shape your eyebrows. Any pain felt while tweezing will quickly diminish as your confidence soars from your well-manicured new look.