I never learned how to apply eyeliner correctly and I have thin lips, so the only makeup I ever really got into was doing my eyebrows. It started late, in college, because my roommate had a makeup routine. She never showered but she always looked like she had her shit together. I experimented with all sorts of products (my favorite was this brush/pencil in grayish brown). In my last year of college I had a bad mental health spell and started drawing them on darker and thicker. They had to be symmetrical, but they aren’t naturally symmetrical, and in the end I looked like a cartoon character. When I got to grad school I stopped doing them altogether. As the only woman in my four-person cohort, and because I felt increasingly comfortable in more masculine clothing, it didn’t make sense to be painting my face every day.

These days I live in a city where looking put together at the supermarket is a real thing. I’ll go six months or longer without putting on any makeup, and then one day I’ll be at the drugstore and buy a crayon and suddenly eyebrows will be my look for the season. You would think I would have figured out the face I want to present to the world by now, but I haven’t. I guess that’s just how it goes.