One of the basic tenets of beauty is that we should take care of our eyebrows because they frame our face. For too long, my face has been framed like a poster haphazardly hung on a dorm room wall. Thanks to genetics, not only did my brows not grow in as fully as I wanted, but they naturally look like a slightly more subtle version of The People’s Eyebrow (thanks, Mom). To get the look I desired, I’d get my eyebrows threaded and tinted, but I’m embarrassingly lazy when it comes to personal upkeep that I can’t do on my own—if I could give myself a dental checkup to avoid scheduling an appointment with my dentist, I would. I long fantasized about a world in which I could wake up with naturally perfect brows. So once I learned about microblading, my prayers were answered.
Or so I thought. The more I researched, the more it seemed that genetics would block my blessing yet again—based on what I read, having oily skin meant that the eyebrow tattoo wouldn’t heal properly (again, Mom). Still, I couldn’t find any first-person accounts of people with oily skin having microblading done, so I set out to see for myself if my journey to eyebrow fleekness would indeed stop at a dead end. Upon finding out about Better Brows NYC, I met with its owner, microblading artist Kendra Bray, for a consultation. Better Brows NYC was born from Bray’s own microblading experience that left her disappointed, and she even has a tattoo license despite it not being required for microblading artists, so I trusted her to know what was best for me.