fashionable line
Leave them just as they are, unfashionable or not
Trim up the untidy bits at the inner edge, thin down the outer edge to a narrow line and lighten the general effect with some brow coloring of a lighter color
Pluck them evenly along the whole length, taking hairs mainly from underneath
A surprising amount hung on that question. We worried about eyebrows a lot. Mine were a pair of hairy caterpillars straight out of the Ugly Bug Ball, from Dad’s half of the family. Not like my mother’s. She had Grace Kelly arches, of course. But I didn’t want to make the same mistake as Angela, who had plucked hers from on top and now they wouldn’t grow back. Eyebrows were like the punctuation marks of a face; you didn’t realize how they made sense of the rest until they were missing.
The magazines generally had seven pages of things you had wrong with your looks, followed by an article called “Confidence and How to Get It.” One day, when we were much older, we might have a laugh about that, but not yet. If our skins were still problematic and subject to uncontrollable eruptions, then so were our hearts; agonizingly tender and so easily hurt.
Mags could make you do really crazy things, mind. That afternoon in the Kardomah, Sharon announced she was getting a perm. She’d been reading about Problem Face Shapes.
A round face can easily look like a full moon, especially if you have the wrong kind of haircut. Fringes don’t improve round faces and neither do short cuts. Hair is crucial so aim for width at the side. A light perm will give body to your hair and need only make it slightly wavy if you don’t fancy a head of curls.
“Go on, you’ve got gorgeous hair, what are you on about?” I said.
Sha’s sunny face was suddenly shadowed with doubt. Her baby-blond mane was so fine I couldn’t imagine it in any other style. Out ofall of us, Sharon came closest to the ideal Disney princess. It wasn’t just the long golden hair that flicked up happily at the ends. There was such a sweetness in her, any minute you expected her to throw open the window and start singing to the birds, who would come in and help her make a dress. “ ’Sall right for you with your cheekbones.” Sharon sucked in her cheeks till they were concave. She looked like Mamgu with her dentures out. “My face looks like the blimmin’ moon.”
“Stop it. I look like a whippet that needs a square meal, I do.”
“You want your ’ead examining, you do, Petra Williams. You’re like a model, you are. I’m fat,” she said flatly.
“No you’re not. You’ve lost loads of weight, mun. Look at that top, it’s baggy on you.”
And so we carried on the game, the eternal ping-pong of female friendship, the reassurance that never truly reassures, but we crave it anyway. The game that always ends in a score draw, if you want to keep your friend.
The waitress came up and banged down the metal plate with the bill. “It’s not a hotel, you know.”
We paid and walked along the street to the seafront. In a few minutes we were on the concrete steps that led down to the pebbled beach. After the warm, soupy air of the café, the sea breeze was like a slap. When I opened my mouth wide, the salty air blew all the way down to my lungs. From across the bay came the mournful sound of the hooter that told you it was tea break at the steelworks. In the distance, I could see the flame flickering on top of the gas tower. It never went out. My dad would be eating the sandwiches my mother made for him. Ham and cheese every day.
Schinken mit Käse
, my mother would say under her breath as she wrapped them in greaseproof paper. Dad asked for less butter, too thick a layer turned his stomach. Mine, too. He never asked for anything else.
Sharon was scrutinizing the pebbles on the beach and I sat next to her, knees tucked under my chin, poncho pulled tight around me. She was always searching for the perfect pebble, especially the ones she said looked like
Leave them just as they are, unfashionable or not
Trim up the untidy bits at the inner edge, thin down the outer edge to a narrow line and lighten the general effect with some brow coloring of a lighter color
Pluck them evenly along the whole length, taking hairs mainly from underneath
A surprising amount hung on that question. We worried about eyebrows a lot. Mine were a pair of hairy caterpillars straight out of the Ugly Bug Ball, from Dad’s half of the family. Not like my mother’s. She had Grace Kelly arches, of course. But I didn’t want to make the same mistake as Angela, who had plucked hers from on top and now they wouldn’t grow back. Eyebrows were like the punctuation marks of a face; you didn’t realize how they made sense of the rest until they were missing.
The magazines generally had seven pages of things you had wrong with your looks, followed by an article called “Confidence and How to Get It.” One day, when we were much older, we might have a laugh about that, but not yet. If our skins were still problematic and subject to uncontrollable eruptions, then so were our hearts; agonizingly tender and so easily hurt.
Mags could make you do really crazy things, mind. That afternoon in the Kardomah, Sharon announced she was getting a perm. She’d been reading about Problem Face Shapes.
A round face can easily look like a full moon, especially if you have the wrong kind of haircut. Fringes don’t improve round faces and neither do short cuts. Hair is crucial so aim for width at the side. A light perm will give body to your hair and need only make it slightly wavy if you don’t fancy a head of curls.
“Go on, you’ve got gorgeous hair, what are you on about?” I said.
Sha’s sunny face was suddenly shadowed with doubt. Her baby-blond mane was so fine I couldn’t imagine it in any other style. Out ofall of us, Sharon came closest to the ideal Disney princess. It wasn’t just the long golden hair that flicked up happily at the ends. There was such a sweetness in her, any minute you expected her to throw open the window and start singing to the birds, who would come in and help her make a dress. “ ’Sall right for you with your cheekbones.” Sharon sucked in her cheeks till they were concave. She looked like Mamgu with her dentures out. “My face looks like the blimmin’ moon.”
“Stop it. I look like a whippet that needs a square meal, I do.”
“You want your ’ead examining, you do, Petra Williams. You’re like a model, you are. I’m fat,” she said flatly.
“No you’re not. You’ve lost loads of weight, mun. Look at that top, it’s baggy on you.”
And so we carried on the game, the eternal ping-pong of female friendship, the reassurance that never truly reassures, but we crave it anyway. The game that always ends in a score draw, if you want to keep your friend.
The waitress came up and banged down the metal plate with the bill. “It’s not a hotel, you know.”
We paid and walked along the street to the seafront. In a few minutes we were on the concrete steps that led down to the pebbled beach. After the warm, soupy air of the café, the sea breeze was like a slap. When I opened my mouth wide, the salty air blew all the way down to my lungs. From across the bay came the mournful sound of the hooter that told you it was tea break at the steelworks. In the distance, I could see the flame flickering on top of the gas tower. It never went out. My dad would be eating the sandwiches my mother made for him. Ham and cheese every day.
Schinken mit Käse
, my mother would say under her breath as she wrapped them in greaseproof paper. Dad asked for less butter, too thick a layer turned his stomach. Mine, too. He never asked for anything else.
Sharon was scrutinizing the pebbles on the beach and I sat next to her, knees tucked under my chin, poncho pulled tight around me. She was always searching for the perfect pebble, especially the ones she said looked like
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