The Stylized Guide To Frida Khalo Eyebrows.

I was a late bloomer. In all bar one areas of my body, my development was the absolute loser in the race against that of my classmates. See, one or well, technically two, parts of me developed before my limbs, vocabulary, (still impending) sense of sensibility and even the ability to hold my head up on my own. I believe that when my parents had that very first scan, the gynaecologist told them "congratulation! you are expecting a healthy pair of eyebrows".

In an unfortunate turn of events, I was about to spend the next decade and a half of my life in a world that frowned upon brows... With Caragh Delevigne and Lily Collins still swimming in their fathers' ballsacks, the only time you saw more than approximately 15 hairs covering a woman's eyes was in before shots on laser clinic ads, threading salons and ugly-duckling-turns-into-a-swan type plots in American films (you know the story, bushy browed nerdy girl gets a good ol' plucking, high shine barbie-esque skirt and subsequently the class stud. Or, Anne Hathaway is revealed as the next to throne of an inexistent country and like any good Queen to be, she knows that her politics and eyebrows can't both meet in the middle). My classmates would trim theirs down to absolutely nothing thus making mine look even more like a pair of yetis naping over my eyes, in comparison. The more I hated them the more they started liking each other. Like a couple entangled in a secret affair, knowing they should keep apart seemed to work like an aphrodisiac that drew them closer and closer together . My mother was like a watchdog, every time I had as much as pulled a single hair out she would yell at me and tell me I'm ruining my face. [Real time fun fact: She just walked in, asked me what I was writing about and said : don't you dare write portray me as harsh, I did you a favour]. In fear of getting yelled at, I let the secret browffair blossom until my 14th birthday. Eventually, like a scorned spouse I had enough. No amount of motherly screaming was going to stop me. Determined, I walked into a shop and straight to the hair removal section. Creams seemed messy, tweezers needed patience... and then finally, in the form of a pack of pink wax strips I found the Moses I needed to part the Red sea that had become of my eyebrows. Halleluja! And parted they did, only a tad too much. I waxed the top of my brows and the bottom of my brows, the sides of my brows, the middle of my brows... as a testament to the extend of their growth, all that waxing didn't quite leave me with a 1920's brow line, but it was certainly a bit too much. In immense fury my mum gave me photos of Frida Khalo and told me I should aspire to look like that. I thought she was insane. obviously. I decided to grow a fringe instead and put my brow vows behind me forever. Alas, the cow's lick on the right side of my head eventually had enough of the sharing of my hairline and the fringe had to be grown out. My naked eyebrows were once again exposed. I started compromising with them. You can grow as full and as wild as you like but you are in no way allowed to meet. The Moses like strips got substituted by the milder tweezers.

And then something magical happened. (Ok in reality it was to be expected as trends tend to get recycled.) BIG BROWS HIT THE SCENE. The bigger the better. At first it was the icons, then the runways and then the people.

Big browed ladies rejoice. People are now TRYING to achieve what we've been fighting off. And, hey slim browed blond girl in the 6th grade, you know when you told me to sort my eyebrows out? IN YOUR FACE.

So now, I can embrace my true self, I can become the person I was always meant to be...

Estoy Fridha, por favor conocerte.

And then there were three...

I know parents lose their children and children lose their parents. I know there are deeper cuts and sorer wounds. I know life can be cruelly unfair on the fate stricken. I know that our pampered little dog dying peacefully in the arms of the people she loved the most at the grand age of 17 and a half doesn't compare to all these. But she was part of our family. A family that is, at the moment, feeling loudly incomplete in a house that’s never been so quiet. Our bodies don’t seem to know the news that our brains and hearts are struggling with, so we still walk carefully around the corner she used to sleep by in fear of stepping on her long playful tail. I know she was just a dog to you. But she was so much more to me. I had expected the lack of empathy but I’ve been shocked by the inexistence of sympathy and understanding. We found her when I was 8, she was the best present I have ever received, a present that kept on giving, selflessly. We became four. We grew older, wiser, sillier. We changed schools, universities, jobs, houses, cities and countries. I turned from a child into a teenager into a young adult into an adult. She turned from an adorable yet piranha like puppy with a crazy penchant for chewing, into a chubby adult dog with short legs and a tail that smiled to everyone, into a skinny old lady that would refuse to put a single paw forward unless the whole group was together.  She gave us love, happiness and countless slobbery kisses throughout it all. The day we got her was nearly 18 years ago. 18 years that flew by. Today we were left three. We are happy she was so loved until the end, beyond the end… We’re happy that we are alive, well and able to carry her memory. I know I didn't lose a parent or a child and for that I am so so so grateful. I know they say she was ‘just a dog’ but we’re heart broken. I never realised being grieved was a privilege reserved exclusively for the two legged. She will always be a beauty.