January 31, 2010
Looking for a facial pick-me-up? Think eyebrows.
They are perhaps the quickest, cheapest, easiest way to freshen the face and even lessen the amount of makeup you need to wear.
The options are wide:
Tweezing is the most common at-home method, and can be very precise.
Waxing is quick, but painful. The hairs are pulled from the root, which lengthens the time it takes them to grow back.
Threading, an ancient method of hair removal that originated in the Far East, involves rolling and twisting cotton thread along the surface of the skin, entwining hairs which are lifted from the follicle. It is more precise than waxing, and aestheticians say it’s better for those with sensitive skin.
Experts recommend against shaving the eyebrows, because they say it makes the hairs grow in more coarse.
Sima Alborzi, an aesthetician at Modern Salon & Spa in Charlotte, N.C., recommends turning to a professional to establish the shape your brow should take.
As a general rule, women with larger features should opt for fuller brows; those with small features should go for thinner. Unique features call for certain techniques. For example, if a person has close-set eyes, starting the brows a little farther apart may give the illusion of wider-set eyes.
Professional brow grooming averages about $15, and experts recommend having it done every four to six weeks. In between, most women will need to pluck strays as they grow in.
When plucking on your own, experts warn to take your time and stop to evaluate. Brow hairs take a while to grow back, so if a spot is overplucked, you’ll need to fill it in with a pencil or eyebrow powder.
Men can benefit from a nicely groomed pair of eyebrows, too. And experts say more men are paying attention.
“Wives want to be married to a playmate, not a primate,” says Jeannine Baldwin, an aesthetician at Emerson Joseph, a men’s salon in Charlotte.
Men’s two most common brow offenses, she says, are the unibrow, where the brows connect over the nose, and brows that extend to the temples.
“Men can make their eyes look wider, bigger and brighter” by grooming their brows, Baldwin says. “It gives them a fresher look, even just getting rid of a few little scragglies.”
Men with bushy brows should trim them with scissors to allow them to lie flat. Be careful not to trim them so short that they become spiky, as can easily happen in the case of coarse hair.
Baldwin says she sees plenty of young men who want help banishing the unibrow. Other clients start seeking help in their 40s and 50s. “That’s when the hair gets wilder,” she says.
January 17, 2010
Manscaping: Threading is Becoming More Popular
An ancient Middle Eastern hair removal technique is the latest manscaping trend in Nashville. Barbers and salon owners report that more men — of all ethnicities — are coming in for threading to get rid of everything from unibrows to back hair. For the uninitiated, threading is, well, removing hair with thread as an alternative to shaving, plucking or waxing.
Haider Feron, who does threading at Gold Star Barber Shop on Nolensville Road, said that in his native Iraq about 90 percent of the men have their facial hair threaded. When he was training to become a barber there, threading was one of the first skills he learned.
When Feron moved to Nashville 10 years ago, all of his customers were Middle Eastern. Recently, however, white, black and Hispanic men have started to come in for threading, Feron said.
“They haven’t seen it before, so it’s new and exotic to them,” Feron said, adding that most of his customers prefer threading to shaving because it causes facial hair to grow back more slowly and less thick.
Watching Feron thread feels like a rare glimpse at an antiquated ritual, akin to the straight razor. He pulls a long strand of blue thread from spool and places one end in his teeth. He twists the string and rolls it over the face, pulling out trapped hairs by the root.
The technique is similar to plucking, but removes hair in rows rather than one at a time. Feron charges $5 for threading, but prices vary from shop to shop.
Ty Banks, 28, of Antioch, has his eyebrows threaded about once a month at a Nashville salon called Lashville Lashes on Jefferson Street.
“I don’t have a unibrow or anything, but they’re bushy,” Banks said. “Once they’re done they just look cleaned up.”
Banks compares getting his eyebrows threaded to trimming unsightly ear or nose hair. He said the result isn’t feminine looking, just tidy and well shaped.
“It’s starting to get pretty big now for guys to get cleaned up,” he said.
December 17, 2009
Threading is ALL Natural and Good for Sensitive Skin
* Threading is 100% natural, there are no artificial waxes, chemicals, invasive techniques or involvement of sharp objects or heat-it is considered one of the safest and least painful methods of hair removal.
* Threading can get rid of individual, or a complete line of unwanted hair - giving the eyebrows a very clean and defined look. Unlike waxing or tweezing threading does not cause a green shadowy effect; does not cause ingrown and the regrowth becomes finer and more sparse after regular treatmentsEven the short stubbly hair can be removed; this gives you the option of avoiding that ugly groth period that everyone hates!
* For women who Breakout from waxing tend to NOT break out from threading Threading does not peel, traumatize, or remove the top layer of the skin. Threading is highly recommended and an excellent option for those who use Retin-A, Accutane, and similar products.
* Prevention Against Wrinkles
Waxing can tug, pull, stretch, and even remove the delicate skin on your face, eventually developing wrinkles! But not with threading. So instead of torturing yourself with waxing, choose threading which will leave you hairless and smooth!
* For women who would like to pursue a more natural beauty regimen, eyebrow threading is the best choice, since it does not use harmful products.
December 2, 2009
Eyebrow Threading vs. Waxing or Tweezing
All women (and an increasing number of “in-touch-with their-metrosexual/ feminine-side” men) want to have perfectly shaped eyebrows. There are several ways to achieve eyebrow perfection, the most common method being tweezing. Waxing is definitely the second runner-up, but recently, eyebrow threading has become popular as well. There are pros and cons to each one of these methods, and there also are similarities and differences between them.
None of these methods are a means to permanent hair removal. The results of tweezing will last for the shortest duration of time. Most women who tweeze their eyebrows have to do it on a daily basis in order to maintain a clean look, free of stray hairs. There are very few “risks” associated with tweezing – at worst, you might pinch some skin and wind up with a little soreness or a cut. While hair re-growth varies from person to person, the results of waxing generally last between three and six weeks. Also, for most people, if you keep waxing regularly, your hair will actually start to grow back finer and lighter. You may have some swelling, tenderness, and redness for about twenty-four hours following your waxing. Eyebrow threading has actually been around for centuries, and it is a hair removal practice that originated in India. The results of threading generally last between two and three weeks, and like waxing, the hair will generally grow back finer and lighter. There are no risks associated with threading – it is a very gentle hair removal method, and it is actually the best way to remove ingrown hairs.
Tweezing can be somewhat painful at first, but most women who do it regularly attest that they feel virtually no pain when they tweeze. The more practice you get with the tweezers, the more agile you will become – you will develop a technique so that you don’t pinch your skin. One tip of the trade is to pull your skin taut before plucking so that the tweezers don’t yank at your skin when you pull out each hair. Some women say that it helps them to put moisturizer on prior to plucking, but others feel that doing so makes it harder go grab the hairs because the moisturizer makes things slippery. Without a doubt, waxing is painful, especially your first time. However, if you get your eyebrows waxed by a professional, it will be very quick – like ripping off a bandage. There is very little pain associated with the threading method, which uses thread to pull out hairs by their follicles. Most people say that they actually feel no pain during a threading procedure, even the first time they had it done.
Tweezing is generally not something that you pay someone else to do for you, and that is really one of its greatest appeals. Your only payout for this eyebrow shaping technique is the cost of tweezers, which is generally less than five or ten dollars. On the other hand, if you don’t have a good eye or a steady hand, you may be leery about entrusting your appearance to yourself. If you are confident with your abilities, however, tweezing allows you to take care of your eyebrows in the comfort of your own home, and once you really get the hang of it, it is relatively pain-free and it is very unlikely that you will incur any swelling or redness in the tweezed areas. You can also wax your eyebrows at home, but you should only do so if you are extremely confident and you know exactly what you are doing. If you have never waxed your legs or anything before, don’t start with your eyebrows – they are right above your eyes, and you need those! Most women who wax their eyebrows prefer to have it done by a pro, and the cost is generally between ten and twenty dollars. Eyebrow threading is not something that you can do at home (unless you have been trained to do so), so you have to go to a professional. The cost is generally between fifteen and thirty dollars.
November 21, 2009
Benefits of Threading
September 23, 2009
More Men likely grooming their eyebrows today!
They are going for a treatment called “threading,” an ancient method of hair removal
which originated in India in which a thin twine of cotton thread is rolled over the offending area, plucking the hair from the follicle level.
Unlike plucking, threading removes an entire row of hair at a time so is quicker, more accurate and less painful, the store says, although the treatment still smarts.
The over-plucked feminine look favored by Sylvester Stallone however is a serious no-no. A quick tidy-up in the style of Jude Law is all that’s needed.
August 11, 2009
Simple tips to tame and upkeep your eyebrows!
- Spray a little hair spray on your brows and brush them using your toothbrush to keep them in place.
- If you don’t have time for tweezing, you can get the desired contour quickly by brushing them upwards and then snipping the longest hairs beyond the natural arch using a pair of tiny scissors.
- Eyebrows slanting upwards make you look angry, so be careful not to take off too much at the outer corners
- Before tweezing your brows, you must prepare your skin by wiping the brow area with a cotton ball soaked in astringent. The cooling effect numbs the skin for sometime and thus, you do not feel much pain.
- Hold the tweezers at 45 degrees and pluck the stray hairs below the brow line in the direction of the hair growth.
- If your brows are sparse, use a freshly sharpened brow pencil to fill in the areas with light, quick strokes.
- To get a natural and more defined look, you can brush your brows with a brow brush dipped in brow powder in upward and outward strokes.
- It is important to use the correct shade for your brows. Fair women can use blonde shades while olive colored women should choose tawny or brown. Dark African-American women can use gray shades.
- To add volume to your brows, use a stiff, slanted brush to apply eye shadow in short gentle strokes.
- In case, you have over tweezed certain brow area, try to fill the patch using brow shadow, applying in the direction of the hair growth.
- Eye shadow gives more natural look to your brows than an eyebrow pencil!
- Brow shade should be about two shades lighter than hair color for olive or dark skinned women and two shades darker than hair color blondes or women with grey hair.
Voila! Perfectly kept eyebrows until your next threading appointment!
July 17, 2009
What is threading??
Eyebrow threading is a technique which originated in India. Salons in Western nations offered the service to Middle Eastern clients for decades before European and American women became interested and the popularity of eyebrow threading skyrocketed. The hair removal technique is not just for the eyebrows: threading can be used to remove other facial and body hair as well.
Eyebrow threading involves twisting a piece of thread into a double strand. This double stranded thread is used to pick up a line of hair and then remove it, creating a very clean, precise hairline. Eyebrow threading is the technique preferred by Indian movie stars, who are often distinguished by their crisp brow lines.
Eyebrow threading can be used in so many ways including to eliminate a unibrow, raise the arch of the eyebrow, or add shape and definition to the brow. Because it removes hair by the follicle, it is a reasonably long lasting hair removal technique as well. The technique is relatively inexpensive because it is easy to do quickly and does not require any costly chemical ingredients. For women who would like to pursue a more natural beauty regimen,eyebrow threading is a good choice, since it does not use harmful products.
Unlike tweezing or plucking, eyebrowthreading removes one clean line of hair all at once, making it much quicker and easier to shape the brows. Eyebrowthreading also will not harm the skin like wax and some depilatory creams can. If done correctly, the skin should not be red or irritated for more than a few minutes after the eyebrow threading session. Some aestheticians also find it easier to shape eyebrows using this technique than other methods available.
If you want perfect eyebrows without using harmful products, eyebrow threading could be for you!