no YOU’RE so vain

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Thinking About a Tattoo

Engie recently posted about the tattoos she is not going to get and I have been thinking about it a lot.

Currently, I have zero tattoos. There was a time when I was twenty that I was obsessed with getting a tattoo. I think the tattoo I thought I wanted was some sort of Chinese symbol of the style that were so popular in the early aughts, but I can’t really remember; I don’t have the faintest idea what the symbol would have been for. Luckily, my tendency toward procrastination saved me. At the time, I told myself that if I was still obsessed with getting a tattoo after a year, I could get one. The obsession faded, and I have not seriously wanted one for decades. 

Until now.

But the tattoo I’m hankering after these days is a little different. I want to tattoo my eyebrows. 

My eyebrows have always been on the full side, and I’ve only ever plucked them: no waxing or threading here. And I’ve only ever plucked them lightly; somehow I avoided the Super Skinny Eyebrow Trend of the 90s and 00s. 

My eyebrows are also similar in color to my natural hair color, which is kind of a mousey light brown. Plus, a few strands of brow are distinctly grey. I have also noticed more recently, perhaps in the past six months or so, that my right eyebrow is thinning. Or getting patchy, or something. There’s skin visible where brow should be. 

For the past decade or so, I’ve been using dark brown eyebrow mascara to match my brows more closely to my hair. Then, in the past few years, I’ve been dyeing my brows to match my hair. The dye doesn’t last very long, though, so I have to supplement with eyebrow mascara in between hair appointments. And now that my right eyebrow has sprouted a weird bald patch, I’ve been experimenting with eyebrow pencil. 

At my last hair appointment, my hair stylist revealed to me that she has a similar issue with her brows not matching her hair. But instead of dyeing her brows, she has permanent eyebrow tattoos!

I am familiar with eyebrow tattoos; I know several people who have them. But for these people at least, I’ve been able to tell that their brows were tattooed on, mainly because there has been no brow leftover. Does that make sense? Like, the only brow visible on the forehead is tattoo. This is such a great option for people with very fine brows or brows that did not survive the Super Skinny Brow Trend, or people who have no brows due to alopecia or chemotherapy or whatever. When they are well done, they look great. But since I have eyebrows, it seems silly to shave them off and replace them with tattooed ones.

HOWEVER, my hair stylist informed me that her tattoos are UNDER her brows. And I looked and looked and cannot tell that her brows are tattooed at all. The tattoo must serve the same purpose as eyebrow pencil, filling in around the actual hair. (Why do I keep wanting to say “fur” instead of hair? Yes, technically eyebrows are made up of small hairs… but I maintain that eyebrows should have their own terminology, like lashes and whiskers do.)

All this has me thinking a lot about whether I want to get eyebrow tattoos. Apparently there is also something called microblading which seems to have similar but less permanent results. (I have heard the term “microblading” for years and years and always thought it was a hair removal procedure, not a way to make your eyebrows look fuller. Yet another reason not to make assumptions, Internet!) And there seems to be a third option, which is an eyebrow transplant. I think I will leave that to people who are in REAL need of eyebrows. 

Have you – or someone you know – tried eyebrow tattoos or microblading? 

I’m still early in the Thinking About It stage, although I think about brow tattoos quite a lot. The main things holding me back are: 1.) Pain. I don’t even have my ears pierced, am I really going to get tattoos on my face? 2.) Permanency. What if the tattoo job isn’t good? What if it is good but I hate it? What if I do it and then still need to use brow mascara to get the color I want? What if I spend my entire life looking like Uncle Leo?

Probably, as with the previous tattoo obsession, I need to hold off for at least a year to see if it’s a real desire or a passing fancy. In the meantime, I think I will try something I saw on Instagram, which is using a clear brow gel in combination with an eyebrow pen.

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Five for Friday

It’s Friday and I am posting this on Friday, March 15; you may not see this until June for all Feedly cares, but I don’t think I have any control over that. This is kind of a cranky way to begin a blog post, so, as I say to Carla: Let’s try that again.

It’s Friday! I am coming off a night of broken sleep (child coming in at three, returning to bed around four, husband waking up for the day at five thirty), so let’s have some Friday bullets. 

1. Are you as steeped in the Kate Middleton drama as I am? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a) bless you and b) here is a really thorough explainer. If you are In It, I highly recommend finding a friend who is similarly obsessed so you can text her memes and links to conspiracy theories at all hours of the day. My personal opinion is that Kate is recovering from surgery, probably doesn’t look or feel her best, and just wants to recover in private until Easter as previously planned and communicated by the Palace. BUT, simmering in that dark gross part of me that enjoys drama, especially when it feels very removed from my own boring non-royal life, I am kind of hoping that someone is pregnant with someone’s love child.

2. What kind of snacks do you keep stocked in your house? I ask because we have become friendly with our new neighbors and they invite us over all the time for all manner of things. While I am a little intimidated by reciprocating with A Real Meal (they are incredible cooks and bakers, and every time we’ve been invited to their house the food has been astonishing in both quantity and quality), I am ostensibly fine with having them over for drinks and snacks. The other day, the kids went sledding and we had them over for impromptu cocoa. Luckily, we had cocoa mix in the pantry, and even more luckily the mix had tiny marshmallows, and even more luckily, we had an unopened bottle of spray whipped cream because one of the neighbor kids informed me that he really likes whipped cream on his cocoa in a tone so grave I understood him to mean that something dire would happen if no whipped cream appeared. But then there are all these kids and their parent in my house and I realized I DON’T HAVE ANY SNACKS. It’s not that I don’t enjoy snacks; it’s that I enjoy them too much. We managed to scrape together some muffins I had in the freezer and some individual bags of chips and veggie straws that we had leftover from some party or other, so no one starved. But it made me feel like I need to have at least some snacks on hand. But what?!? I’m not crazy about having a bunch of cookies around, because they either go uneaten or get devoured in two seconds. If we have chips, I will eat the chips. Cheese and crackers aren’t big among the elementary school set, and it’s not like I can have an emergency brie on hand for last minute guests (or can I?). Fresh fruits and veggies, yes, great, and I try to have those around as much as possible, but we don’t eat enough of them to have a ready supply in the fridge at all times. Occasionally I panic buy a bag of clementines, but at least a third of them inevitably go bad before we can eat them. So: shelf stable snacks that appeal to kids and adults but are not so appealing that my family will eat them before we have guests. Is this a thing? 

3. In vanity news, I have been Influenced to buy several things lately. I really like this very inexpensive multi-use highlighter stick. Of course I cannot find the video that originally persuaded me that this was an essential tool in my (non-existent) makeup game, but I like dabbing it on the inner and outer aspects of my eyes and swiping it below my eyebrows for a little bit of lively glow. Totally worth $2.94. The other thing I’ve already tried enough times to recommend it is this bronzing mousse. The weather is edging ever closer to summer, and I don’t want to scare the new neighbors with my fish-belly legs, so I’ve been practicing in the hope that I can add a little lifelike color to my skin before I appear in public in running shorts. I am always on a quest for the perfect fake tan, and this is the closest I’ve gotten. The things I like best about it are: a) It’s dark when it goes on, so you can SEE where you are applying it, and you can also see if you are introducing streaks to your thighs or stomach before the streaks have become one with your skin. b) While it has a scent, as all tanning products inevitably do, it strikes me as much fainter and less objectionable than any other tanning product I’ve ever used. c) The resulting tan is darker than my normal skin tone, but not so dark that it screams FAKE TAN. (I use this tanning mitt to apply it to my body which works really well and helps prevent streaking.) Once again, I have no idea which account suggested this tanning mousse, but I am a fan.

4. One of my current parenting goals is to provide more opportunities for Carla to spend time with her friends. I think I’ve mentioned before that I hate playdates. They fill me with anxiety, because they are both forced social time – sometimes with parents I don’t know well – and because I have no idea how to deal with more than just my one child. For better or for worse, that’s just how I am, and so we haven’t had a ton of playdates. But now that Carla is older, playdates presumably no longer require that social element AND the kids are old enough that I can give them a lot more independence. I used to agonize over how I was going to entertain two whole children, and so I’d gravitate toward things in my comfort zone, like baking projects or crafts. Unfortunately, those things require a lot of prep and supervision and clean up, so they aren’t relaxing or easy. But now I can pretty much let the kids go off and play together. Sometimes we all take a walk outside, and I’m always happy to take a walk, even if the kids ask me to pretend I’m not with them.

Even though playdates are, in many ways, easier now, I still of course have anxiety about them. I find myself fretting about planning An Activity, just in case. I find myself worrying about what happens if the kids get into a fight or misbehave or want food (it always comes back to snacks!) or want to be on screens the whole time.

This is so silly! When I was a kid, I don’t think my friends and I EVER had An Activity. We just went and played Barbies or roller skated in my basement or played school or ran around outside or played house. I can’t even imagine asking my mom or a friend’s mom for ideas. And snacks were not provided by the parent! We scrounged up our own snacks, and I don’t even remember a parent being present for any snacking. In fact, part of the fun of going to someone’s house was checking out their snacks. (Not as fun: eating any sort of meal at a friend’s house, because they had different foods than I was used to and different rules. THAT filled me with anxiety.) I loved my friend J’s house because they had an entire drawer full of candy, and you could just… eat candy when you wanted to! J, notably, was pretty uninterested in the candy. I loved my friend R’s house because her garage freezer was STOCKED with popsicles. At my house, we always had little bags of chips or Zingers in the pantry and Dilly Bars in the freezer and pickles in the fridge. (R and I used to each eat a pickle when we were at my house.) So I am guessing that kids DON’T CARE either what they do or what they eat at playdates. They will figure it out. And yet. We have two playdates on the schedule in the next few weeks and I am already stressing about it. I am planning to be Mean Mom and put a ban on screens, but beyond that… I don’t know what to do or what not to do. Wow, I wish I could chill out about this. 

5. You know something that always feels like magic to me, even though it’s science? Topology. Various algorithms keep serving me videos of topological experiments – because I keep watching them when they appear in my feed – and my mind cannot grasp the mathematics/physics. My dad taught Carla how to make a mobius strip and even seeing him create it with my own eyes doesn’t help me understand how or why it works. It’s witchcraft.

What are you up to this weekend, internet? And, more importantly, what kind of snacks will you be eating?

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You Look Tired

“You look tired.” That has to be one of the most irritating sentences ever uttered, no? I mean, it’s not HELPFUL. And if you ARE tired, which you probably are, it just makes you ALSO feel like you look like a used dishrag, which is not the look anyone is trying to achieve. 

A family member used to say that to me almost every time we got together, to the point that there became a need for A Conversation. Fortunately, the commentary has since stopped.

It’s a good thing we are not planning to see this family member anytime soon, because the commentary would be ACCURATE. These days, I feel like I just look SO TIRED. This is probably because I AM tired, even though there is no real reason for being so tired. I lead a low-stress life; I typically go to bed at a reasonable time and rise for the day at a reasonable time; I should be perky and well-rested. 

The thing is, I am NOT. This is in large part because I am a terrible sleeper, and I am trying to work on that. I read a really fascinating article recently, about why so many of us are waking up at 3:00 am every night. You do this too, right? I do. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, I can be pretty sure it will be at 3:00 or 4:30. Sometimes both. The aforementioned article has some insights and potential fixes that I plan to implement, but right now I’m more concerned with the aesthetic impact. 

I have always sported dark undereye circles; that’s just how my face is designed. (This is why the Tula Rose Glow cooling balm is one of my longtime favorite cosmetics.) But lately, I feel like the tired look has become exponentially worse.

For one thing, my eyes are super puffy for the first few hours of the day – like my eyelids have decided to provide their own cozy comforters for the night and are declining to put them away once I wake up. Plus, the crows feet at the sides of my eyes are SO aggressive these days. I keep thinking that they are sleep wrinkles, from pressing my face into one position on the pillow for too long. But… I am beginning to realize they may just be WRINKLE wrinkles. 

Also, I have developed wrinkles across the bridge of my nose, that extend over onto my upper eyelids, like my body is etching its own goggles onto my skin.

Listen, I want very much to be able to wholeheartedly embrace Nicole’s pro-aging philosophy. And in general, I do. But when it comes to whatever is going on with my eye area? I am a fan of NONE of it. Not one thing. 

We live in 2024. There MUST be products that can address these problems and, if not improve them, at least make me feel like I’m Taking Action. (I do wear sunscreen on my face, and I have been moisturizing with Bag Balm, per recommendations from, I think, Birchie and Elisabeth, so I am taking some preventative action already.)

I recently read about these silicone anti-wrinkle patches and they are at a price point that makes me feel pretty strongly about giving them a try. They have options to address forehead wrinkles and mouth wrinkles and undereye wrinkles and hand wrinkles and more, but nothing for the crows feet area. 

From a brief foray into wrinkly eye area remedies, it really sounds like retinol is the best option… but I’ve had Issues with retinol in the past, so I’m reluctant to give it a try. 

I would give some eye masks a go, though. These undereye gel patches get good reviews and have peptides which are supposed to help moisturize and smooth fine lines. Maybe a cooling eye mask would be good, too, especially because I am more self-conscious about my upper-eye puffiness. 

Beyond those things, it looks like the only options are more invasive, like lasers or Botox or fillers. And maybe I need to explore those ideas… but the thought of doing so makes me even more tired. 

What are you doing to keep yourself from looking like you haven’t slept in ten years? Tell me all your secrets – even those that involve retinol or Botox.