I was going to title this 'When eyebrows go bad' but decided that as it's content isn't limited to eyebrows I'd better call it something else.

I am going to start with eyebrows, though.  There are 2 ladies on this base who have probably the worst eyebrows I have ever seen.  They're not natural brows, in fact, that's the entire problem: they're so UN-natural looking that they're scary.  One pair belong to a black chick who appears to have shaved off her natural brows - or has had some kind of accident (either of genetics or the chemical kind) that caused the hair above her eyes to fall out and not re-grow.  She seems to have chosen a thick black crayon, placed a coffee cup over her eye and used it as a stencil, because her brows are perfectly semi-circular and the same width/thickness the whole brow long.  I've never seen brows like that before - no wait, I tell a lie.  I HAVE seen brows like that before, once.  It was in South Dakota, Saloon Number Ten in Deadwood, to be exact.  There was an older lady there who apparently used the same stencil as the black chick, because her brows were perfect semi-circles too.  She used a brow pencil, at least, because they weren't thick.  Much the opposite, actually; they were thin, giving her a very surprised expression.   This black girl has a sort-of-surprised expression, but her brows are too thick to make much of any expression at all, come to think of it. 

The other chick with the odd eyebrows is of hispanic descent.  She too seems to have no natural brows to speak of, but the ones she's drawn on her face aren't thick, black and semi-circular, no sir.  They are thin, but meticulously shaped, I think so as to appear somewhat normal.  The thing that given them away as non-natural brows is their color - MAROON - and the fact that they come very, verrrrrry close to meeting in the middle.  VERY close.  Like 1/8th of an inch close.  She has basically drawn herself a uni-brow.

As I said when describing the black girl and her semi-circular brows, I have never seen brows like those on the faces of both these women in nature.  Never.  I've seen thin brows, thick brows, over plucked brows and those that have never seen a pair of tweezers; I've seen red ones, black ones, blonde and brown ones - I've even seen blue and green ones when someone decided to make their brows match their hair color - but I have never, ever seen eyebrows that are perfectly semi-circular.  EVER.  Neither have I seen eyebrows that are perfect in every other way but that have been groomed to meet an 1/8th of an inch apart.  Come to think of it, I've never seen maroon colored ones before, either.

I honestly wonder if either of these brow-offenders looks in the mirror before they leave the house, and if they DO look at themselves what kind of mental deficit makes them think that they look okay (okay when compared to the rest of the population, that is).  When I look at myself, when I take stock of what I'm wearing or how I look, I compare myself to the people I see on the street or on television every day - normal people, I mean, not celebrities.  If my appearance is such that it won't cause people to laugh at me or stare at me because the way I look is wholly inappropriate, then I consider myself fit to go out in public.  If I look in the mirror and I see something that makes me stick out like the proverbial sore thumb - and stick out in a BAD way - then I either do my best to change what it is that's making me stick out or, if it's possible,  I stay at home.  Both of these ladies had the power to CHANGE the eyebrows that made them into red, swollen, pus-filled ginormous thumbs, yet they continued to crayon and pencil them in and go out in public like that day after day.

Why?  Why do people do things like that?  Don't they look at other women, both around them in the locality and on television, and see that NOBODY else has brows like that - and that nobody else has brows like that for a very good reason, ie they look terrible??!! 

It's not just eyebrows either.  It's hair - I see a lady about my own age regularly who has sprayed and teased her hair into a bouffant square (I shit you not, it really is a square) - and it's even clothing - like the woman I know who insists on wearing halter tops even though her breasts can be seen falling out of the bottom of them.  I just don't know what it is that makes people DO things like crayoned-on eye brows and square hair.  I cannot believe that they look at themselves in the mirror and say " Thick semi-circle eyebrows - check.  Halter top with just a smidgen of tit visible by my belly button - check.  Picasso-esque cube hairstle - check.  Alrighty, I'm ready to go!"  I just cannot believe that they say that. 

I honestly do not know what it is that women who's appearance has run amok see when they look in their mirrors.  Surely they must realize that they don't look like everyone else, and that that difference is a HORRENDOUS one.  Surely they must see what kind of reaction their Crayola-brows and cube-head hair gets them - because I've heard the giggles and seen the points and heard the comments, both whispered and otherwise.  If I'VE heard it, they MUST have heard it.  Why don't they do something about it?  I used to have very short hair, and I've had some terrible haircuts in my time - cuts that were so bad they brought me to tears (the last one left me with bald patches on the back of my head that were impossible to cover up).  What did I do?  I looked at hairstlye and fashion magazines, styled it the best I could and wore hats and strategically placed scarves until it grew back in.  I heard people talking about my bald spots as they stood behind me in line, however, and I made a point of never using the stylist that butchered me again (actually it was her and her razor that spurred me into growing my hair out).  What I did NOT do was rinse, lather and repeat by getting the same cut and style over and over again, which is what these women seem to be doing.  They're stuck in a rinse-lather-repeat trap of bad hair, eyebrows and fashion choices, and they don't know how to break out - or don't WANT to break out.  I suspect it's the latter rather than the former; after all we are bombarded with images of beauty from the moment we wake up in the morning until we go to bed at night. 

I think that just as the 75lb anorexic sees a 250lb reflection staring back at her when she looks in the mirror, so these women must have some kind of ....(I'm reluctant to say 'disorder, but it seems to be the only word I can find that fits, so I'll use it).....disorder that doesn't allow them to see what the rest of the world sees when they look in the mirror.  When they look in the mirror, they must see a beauty queen staring back at them.  Either that, or they see everyone else in the world with the same kind of eyebrows and hairstyle that they themselves have.

I think it's the former....because I sure as hell hope they don't see those semi-circular brows, saggy breasts and square hair on ME!