Through Thick and Thin

Esther Povitsky overthinks her brows.

It took me a while to care about eyebrows. When I was young, I cared way more about having big boobs, and wondering if I would ever not be the shortest person in a room. (Happy to report: It’s happened twice now!) Until, of course, sometime in 2004, when A.J. Soprano woke up at a sleepover with his eyebrows shaved off. I was my family’s A.J.: snotty, mild weight fluctuations, and a disappointment on every level to my parents. When Tony grabbed his son’s face and asked, “What’s different about you? Who did this?” that’s when it clicked. Bad eyebrows can disappoint a parent as much as a bad report card, and I needed to give love and care to those puppies (and be careful whom I fell asleep around). It was also the first time I felt true brow paranoia—a bone-deep intuitive sense that no matter what, I was making the wrong choice about my brows.