I’ve always had big eyebrows. Partly because my hair is so black, but mainly because they’re just big. At primary school, I was always teased about having clown eyebrows, and thinking back, this may be where my hatred/phobia of clowns started (although as I mentioned previously, Poltergeist was the main catalyst). When Brooke Shields first came into the public eye, she also had huge eyebrows, and many people (all of them women) would say “you have eyebrows just like Brooke Shields, you’re so lucky”. Perhaps from an adult perspective, but in the schoolyard it didn’t cut any ice .

Even though I hated my eyebrows, I was always too scared to do anything to them, in case it went horribly wrong and they didn’t grow back. A while ago I found out about a brow shaping specialist who worked at the Estee Lauder counter in Myer, so I bit the bullet and made an appointment. While I was waiting, said specialist came over to ask if I was booked in to see her. I said yes, and she nearly went insane with excitement at the idea of working on my virgin brows. Most of her clients took about fifteen minutes. I took forty five. It’s a good thing I’ve learned how to breathe properly in yoga, because it was more painful than getting a tattoo.

So now I go through phases where I let them grow fully back because I’m to lazy to do anything about it, then suddenly I’ll get them professionally seen to. I no longer use the specialist, instead I go to Sarah at Victoria Gardens, who charges me ten bucks instead of eighty and does a great job. Last night, I decided to do it myself. Damn my eyebrows are huge! I’ve whittled them down to a suave arch, but they’re still pretty enormous compared to most human beings. In a personal grooming frenzy, I also put henna in my hair, so now all the places which were grey are now blazing red. Ah, those Italian genetics … big eyebrows, hennaed hair … inescapable!

Today I’m loving: sleeping well, which I think is down to the absence of coffee