Lena Dunham on How Microblading Saved Her Eyebrows

When my grandmother developed skin cancer over her right eye and was forced to have her entire eyebrow removed, she would draw, using a bluish-gray Maybelline pencil, an eyebrow of her own creation on top of the mottled, baby-pink patch of flesh that remained. It was nothing if not approximate (by this point she was too blind to drive)—more of a concept, a blinking sign that said, INSERT EYEBROW HERE. I would often watch her smudge on the line before we headed out to Toys “R” Us or the Fashion Bug, and she’d look at me as if to say, “Set? All set!” I was too shy to ask whether I could draw it myself, although despite being a small child, I felt deeply that I could improve the overall look and tone. In eighth grade, around the time I’d discovered what my goal weight should be in Seventeen magazine, I decided to put my imagined eyebrow skills to the test. I didn’t have the dramatic forties arches of my mother, or the full Brooke Shields beauty bombs of my little sister, then seven and already being indoctrinated by our parents to appreciate her unibrow (even when her peers did not). Mine were thin and pale, roughly the color of roadkill, with random hairs sprouting where they might, creating the effect of a sparse forehead rug. But I had a totally untested plan: I’d create a superthin shape using my dad’s dull tweezers, then use a pencil of some sort (lip- or eyeliner; who really knew the difference?) to fill in what God had not gifted me. So, seated on the bathroom sink as close to the mirror as possible, I made an arch out of single hairs with squiggles on the ends like cartoon sperm. The outcome was a little lopsided, vulgar, obvious, and exactly what I was going for. I walked into school the next day with pride, sure that some ineffable change would cause other kids to gravitate toward me. Instead a popular boy very plainly asked, “What the fuck is wrong with your eyebrows?” Thus began a near 20-year saga, during which my brows never really grew back. At first I didn’t let them, more scared of what they’d been than what they’d become. When I finally laid down the tweezers, implored to do so by the first professional makeup artist I worked with, a hormonal imbalance meant that they ultimately grew back thick toward my inner eye, but completely missing the necessary downstroke. (PSA: If your eyebrows are naturally patchy, it’s worth getting your hormone panel taken by your doctor because the hair loss can be a sign of underlying issues.) Guided by the cosmetics floor at Bloomingdale’s, I used a variety of products—Benefit’s Brow Kit, a mousy MAC pencil—to draw in arches I would now refer to as “aggressive,” the kind of brows that might travel down the cheek or, worse, onto a stranger’s pillowcase following a college tryst. But on days I woke up too late to scratch them on, I walked around feeling as though my eyes—the windows to my soul—were missing some very essential drapery. I have always equated eyebrows with power—with women who know what they want and get it. Like a good perfume or a giant latte in a pure white cup, a great set of eyebrows is an immediate introduction to a person’s city-wise strength, letting your adversaries know you mean business. Without them, however, you can cut the figure of a nervous bobby-soxer. (There are a few exceptions to this rule, of course, like Tilda Swinton, whose pale eyebrows evoke a conquering alien queen, or Lynn Yaeger, who has created such a thoroughly dramatic fashion persona that eyebrows would almost be too much.) And while I have tried many a purported fix—some tinting, some shaping, mascara wands and pots of goo, and a brief dalliance with RevitaBrow, a product that did provide real growth—it was not enough, never enough. So when I heard about microblading last summer (from a receptionist at my ear, nose, and throat doctor, obviously), I became obsessed with the idea. A semipermanent tattoo where small amounts of pigment are placed under the skin using a sharp and flat handheld tool, microblading is done by experts who take pains to draw in each missing eyebrow hair for an effect that resembles a trompe l’oeil arch. While I have no qualms about tattoos—I currently have twelve—I have distinctly ungenerous associations with permanent makeup, inextricably tied to a hairdresser I used in middle school with a creepy plum-colored line drawn around her mouth for eternity, and women with Marilyn moles they’ve committed to for life. But I didn’t just want this: I needed it. To start the process, it felt important to get a “good” shape from someone I trusted before going under the needle. I was told by the chicest and best-browed people I know that the woman for that job was Manhattan brow guru Jimena Garcia, whose own Kahlo confections and thick-framed spectacles immediately confer icon status upon her. She set to work plucking, waxing, and dyeing, and I was left with a better brow than I’d ever had, tidy and dark. If this were where I ultimately netted out, I thought, Dayenu, as the Jews say—it would have been enough. But like a young lover or a heroin addict, I wanted this feeling to last forever. So my next stop was the Madison Avenue–adjacent Core Club, where the Beverly Hills–based cosmetic artist Dominique Bossavy holds court when in New York. Considered a permanent-makeup pioneer, Dominique—diminutive, blonde, and highly French—is adamant that etching hairlike strokes into the brow line, one by one, “is a trend that has existed for years. They just keep changing the name.” Dominique calls her specific practice Nano Color Infusion, rather than the more popular microblading, a hashtag with nearly 1.5 million mentions on Instagram—and almost as many cautionary tales. While the technique is considered safe, there is a risk of implanting too much pigment too deeply, Dominique warns, explaining that the body rushes to heal the incisions, which can result in an unfortunate blurring effect and even scarring. Then there’s the blocky, one-size-fits-all shape that is increasingly associated with microblading (and the subject of many a YouTube tutorial). As I settle into her chair, Dominique immediately puts me at ease by describing how she custom-blends and compounds her own pigments and uses the teeniest, tiniest needles for smaller punctures. We chat as she sets to work drawing impossibly fine follicles where my hairs ought to be, explaining how a series of permanent-makeup horrors suffered in her 20s sent her, like a mad scientist, down the path to learn how to create perfect, indiscernibly artificial brows, eyeliner, and even flushed-pink lips. Dominique practiced her craft on sheets of pigskin in a basement in Paris’s Sixteenth Arrondissement, near the Champs-Élysées, before moving onto the faces of an illustrious list of Hollywood A-listers, she tells me. This is the part where everyone asks if it hurt. I may be the wrong person to answer, as I have had more noncosmetic surgery than you can shake a stick at, but I found the experience less painful than a sunburn and utterly delightful thanks to Dominique’s heavily accented exclamations of joy: “Beaoooteeful! I am so excited for zees!” A mere 40 minutes later, when I finally sat up, I was too stunned to speak. On my face were two perfect brows, the same hard-to-capture brown as the hair on my head, multidimensional, thick in all the right places, giving my face a grounded seriousness I had been wishing for since that day in the bathroom almost 20 years ago. As I waltzed onto Fifty-fifth Street and into a dream state, I only vaguely heard Dominique telling me it would require two more sessions to perfect my new face friends, and that I needed to avoid getting them wet for a few days while using her plant-based salve with calming chamomile and cooling cucumber to minimize itching and flaking. Out in the world and on my social-media channels, the response from friends, family, and complete strangers was overwhelmingly positive:
“You look amazing. Did you dye your hair?” “You just got back from vacation, right?” “Well, you sure have a lot of energy today!” If I were able to keep secrets I would have just politely thanked them all. Instead, I could barely contain myself as I revealed that I had just had my freaking eyebrows tattooed onto my face! A few weeks after my first session, I became mired in the kind of passing Internet scandal that modern public life as an exhausted woman almost demands. An ill-considered joke on my podcast had both the left and the right vilifying me like I was Tomi Lahren, or maybe even Eva Braun. Texting with a friend, I bemoaned how used to this kind of mayhem I was becoming and how it made me feel like moving into a cave in Appalachia. “Stay strong,” she said. “And don’t forget: You have perfect eyebrows.” So with joy and gratitude, in the name of my grandmother, I took them for a spin in the late-December sun. Twin Peaks
A long-lasting means of eyebrow enhancement is gaining ground among those chasing fuller, thicker arches. Model Kiki Willems in a Vetements x CDG shirt, Balenciaga necklace, and rings by Ana Khouri and Marc Alary. Hair: Shon; Makeup: Sam Bryant
Set design: Shona Heath
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