If Renée Zellweger had only bothered to shape her brows, she could’ve avoided that media ruckus over her looks recently, so claim beauty pundits.

And that assertion has been accompanied with images of the Hollywood actress before (au naturel) and after Photoshop (in arched-brows glory).

 

“It’s so funny, but that’s the first thing I noticed when I saw her pictures!” Jared Bailey, international spokesperson of Benefit Cosmetics, said with a guffaw.

 

Bailey had been away from his home base of California for the past two months, traveling to some of Benefit’s markets, preaching about all things brows.

 

The Philippines was his last stop before heading back to San Francisco, and

Inquirer Lifestyle met with him for this interview at the Benefit boutique and brow bar in Alabang Town Center.

 

Signs of youth

 

The next day, Bailey and crew unveiled to the local press Benefit’s holiday offering: the Bling Brow, or jewels for your brows.

 

“Full eyebrows are the tell-tale signs of youth. If you wanna look younger, fill in your eyebrows, or make older friends,” Bailey deadpanned. “It’s one or the other, and I think the first one is a lot easier. It makes a whole world of difference.”

 

Asians tend to have sparse brows, he said. “We see that too often, and it’s what we consider a weaker brow.” His advice is to go for brow tinting, a service offered at Benefit that applies a

semi-permanent vegetable dye on the brows.

 

“It’s like waking up with eyebrows on,” he said. “The tint we use adheres to the finest hairs—like the fine hairs on your cheeks—to make them appear thicker and fuller. It’s the most low-maintenance way to achieve fuller-looking brows.”

 

Brow tinting lasts three to four weeks.

 

If you are, however, totally bald up there, Benefit applies its three-step brow-mapping technique “so that even if there’s no hair, it can help find the right shape for your face and define where that brow should be,” said Bailey.

 

Brow mapping begins with placing Benefit’s fan of three clear plastic measuring wands against the person’s face, to find its so-called natural points.

 

Point A is the start of the brow, which is aligned on the dimple of your nose (the area where your nostril begins).

 

Point B is the highest point of the arch, determined by placing the second wand diagonally, starting at the end of your nostril, straight up to the center of your pupil.

 

Point C is where your brow should end, marked from the edge of your nostril all the way to the edge of your waterline.

 

It was a technique designed by twin sisters and Benefit founders Jane and Jean Ford, and has been found to work universally for all races and face shapes. While it’s a standard technique, the result differs from one person to the next, Bailey said. It’s designed to find the brow shape suited for each individual.

 

“Jean and Jane knew that the brows are meant to support your face,” he said. “It’s kind of like finding a really good bra, the one that fits and gives you support.”

 

Beauty dilemmas

 

And how do the measurements work on Asians who typically have broader noses than Caucasians? Asians also have faces that tend to be a bit rounder, Bailey noted, but they can be made to look narrower by simply applying the Benefit brow technique. “It’s an illusion, it’s contouring for the face,” he said.

 

Bailey, a licensed aesthetician and former journalist, also dispensed expert advice on beauty dilemmas he usually hears. For instance, if you color your hair red, should you color your brows red as well?

 

“For people who have as much fun with their looks [and use bold colors on their hair], I’d take a shade deeper for your brows than the base tone of your [natural] hair. That will give a really nice, dramatic frame. You will get people to stare right into your eyes,” he said.

 

“If you lighten your hair, which I see a lot in Asia now, and you wanna look more natural, you wanna fill your brows with brow tinting,” he added. “Go with the same tint as what you have on your brows already. Never attempt to use hair dye on your brows. Don’t bleach them. It’s very dangerous.”

 

Women who wear eyeglasses must not think they can ignore brow grooming, he noted. “A ton of women don’t know what brows can do for their face, especially if they wear glasses or if they’ve never had their brows done. It’s the No. 1 thing a woman can do to lift her look and really open her entire eyes.”

 

Even macho men are now paying attention to brow grooming, he said. In the United States, where Benefit has been for nearly 40 years, brow services are quite popular among male clients.

 

“You can’t spell brow without the word ‘bro,’” he quipped. “It’s not about shaping or giving them an arch. It’s about opening up their eyes. Same mapping applies. But what we’re looking for is the highest portion of the brow to kind of open up the eyes, and the ending part. We also clean up the bottom. We usually just use tweezers to define the shape.”

 

Benefit uses the waxing and tweezing method in its brow bar, and uses some key makeup products to achieve well-groomed brows: Brow Zings (brow shaping kit), Gimme Brow (volumizing fiber gel), High Brow (highlighter pencil).

 

Trendy feature

 

Styling using makeup, Bailey stressed, is also the best way to get in on a brow trend without really committing to it. Say, the uniformly straight—not arched—brows sported by Korean idols. Ironically, Korea is Benefit’s biggest market in Asia, and Korean men and women alike regularly come in for brow services.

 

“Anybody who lived through the 1990s regrets following brow trends,” Bailey said with an eye roll. “In Korea, the hair growth pattern is so different. They do have a bit of denser brows and they grow straight across the face. It’s what we specialize in, to find that natural shape on a person’s face, to accentuate the facial features and frame the face. In Korea, they enhance the brow with makeup to make it look straighter than it really is. If you want to follow the Korean brow trend, the best thing to do is to start with a brow map and fill it in with makeup and straighten it out. Instead of filling it in on the top for the arch, you fill it in on the bottom.”

 

Benefit has also noted how brows have become a trendy beauty feature for several seasons now, most notably on the fashion runways. They’re either painted, bleached out or encrusted with jewels.

 

“This year we decided to find a way for modern, urban women to find a way to rock that same type of trend but not hide their brow shapes,” Bailey said of Benefit’s Bling Brow, a set of Swarovski crystal pieces designed “to enhance and accentuate that perfect brow shape,” the brand’s holiday offering.

 

And as for Bridget Jones, “she should’ve gone to a Brow Bar, have a little tint, primp them up a bit,” Bailey said with a grin. “Maybe she will, after this, maybe she will.”

 

Benefit Brow Bars are in Greenbelt 5, TriNoma, Mall of Asia, Alabang Town Center, Central Square, Rustan’s Makati and Rustan’s Shangri-La.