Keep Your Eyebrows, Asses and Asanas

“Don’t throw any of yourself away. Don’t worry about a grand scheme or unified vision for your work. Don’t worry about unity–what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day you’ll look back and it will all make sense.” 

~Austin Kleon, Steal Like An Artist

 

A few years ago I found myself in Philly with some downtime after Mysore with David Garrigues — a perfect time to get my eyebrows done. I got lucky: a master make-up and eyebrow artist sat right around the corner from my hotel and she’d gotten a rare cancellation. I took the spot.

Ursula was lovely. Did she try to sell me stuff? No. Did she try to use the opportunity to change me? No. Ursula looked at me and made me look at myself, my face in her mirror. Then she set me straight:

“Jean Marie, you are missing 75% (maybe it was 45%, but you get the point) of your eyebrow hair. You need to stop waxing your eyebrows.”

She explained that the waxing had removed my natural arch and replaced it with a horizontal line– what she called “Sesame Street eyebrows” after those beloved characters with black bars above their fuzzy eyes. My efforts to get perfect eyebrows had obliterated their natural perfection.

Ursula counseled me to leave my eyebrows alone. I resisted but no, she said, do nothing! She relented a bit, suggesting I try threading if I absolutely couldn’t stand leaving the eyebrows be. In her hands, she proceeded to pencil in what I’d spent years removing from my own face. She colored in what I had erased.

This experience changed how I perceive my eyebrows and more. It’s easy to get caught up wanting so much to be like everyone else, to appear like the dominant trend— whether it’s wishing my butt would disappear, or for a better handstand or a more acceptable voice— but then you risk losing your natural arch, your natural beauty.

People often write me that they envy my backbend, but:

Maybe you already have the flexibility you desire but don’t see it.
Maybe you are overlooking the beauty in the strength you have more dominantly.

Maybe you already have what you think eludes you— it just doesn’t look the same on you as it does on others.

Austin Kleon wrote “don’t throw any of yourself away.” (Please buy his book, “steal like an artist”) and sign up for his weekly email newsletter because it’s a goldmine.) Don’t throw away your backbend, your butt or that arch in your eyebrow. And don’t despair: it’s not too late to color back in what you have erased.

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PS: I’ve barley touched my eyebrows since the day I met Ursula but now people ask me “who does them?” And, if you absolutely dowant to throw something away, make it that guy who tells you that “you could lose a little weight In your hips”

PPS: This post originally appeared on my Insta, but I cleaned it up and put it on the blog because I wanted to make it more mine. “Don’t throw any of yourself away”  This is a constant battle for me: Insta post or blog it? Does anyone read blogs? Well, now it appears on both. Thank you for reading. Cheers!

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