Depending on beauty trends of the day, most of us have been plucking our eyebrows since we were teenagers. Some of us wanted thick brows like Brooke Shields, while others patterned our brows after sultry actresses like Lauren Bacall. All Bacall had to do was look at Bogart with those eyes, and you knew he would cross the Sahara to make her dreams come true.

Today’s beauty experts have decided eyebrows are back in style, but let’s face it. Without eyebrows, your face is in need of a frame. If you’ve ever lost your hair to chemotherapy, or over-tweezed your brows–and they didn’t grow back–then you know that without eyebrows, your face is missing a key element of expression.
Here are some easy tricks to give you modern, shapely brows that define your face.

In “Makeup Wakeup,” the best makeup book for women over 40, authors Sandy Linter and Lois Joy Johnson say women need to do three things: correct and stretch the overall shape; fill sparse areas, and control wiry, coarse hairs.

1. CHOOSE YOUR BROW SHADE

After a certain age, you don’t want a harsh brow. Except for dark brunettes, most everyone can use a blonde or taupe brow pencil like Lancome’s Le Crayon Poudre in Natural Blonde. It blends without overpowering their eyes.

2. DEFINE YOUR ARCH

The brow starts from the corner of the inner eye and ends at a diagonal line that runs from the outer corner of the lip, to the outer corner of the eye. Keep the outer half of the brow as horizontal as possible. Don’t let it curve down around your eye. Don’t pluck gray hairs because they won’t grow back.

3. SKETCH IN BROW WITH PENCIL

Following the brow shape you just mapped out. Hold the pencil on its side. It makes it easier to blend and achieves a softer effect. Lightly fill in with the pencil. A light brown eyeshadow can also be used to further fill in your brow shape, but you don’t need it everywhere. Use with an angled brow brush and apply with a light touch. The spiral brush on the end of the Lancome pencil can be used to blend away any harsh strokes.

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