Eyebrows
have never been bigger: Consider Glossier’s 10,000-person Boy Brow waitlist.
With emerging trends like semipermanent microblading and the “Instagram brow”
phenomenon, it's clear that bushy is the new black.
The quest
for fuller brows has made eyebrow transplants a thing. RealSelf.com, a forum
for cosmetic surgery where visitors share experiences and rate doctors and
procedures, reports that there has been a 140 percent increase in
eyebrow-transplant searches on the site in the last year. Similar to regular
hair transplants, the process involves removing either individual groups or a
strip of skin with active follicles from one area of the body to another. (The
back of the head is the most common harvesting site.) The follicles are then
trimmed to fit the preferred brow shape and transplanted into the brow area.
"Overplucked
eyebrows are the most common cause of people who seek out transplants,” says
New York City and Miami plastic surgeon Jeffrey Epstein who performs about four
such procedures per week. About 70 percent of his patients are women in their
30s and 40s, since that is the time when overzealous plucking in earlier years
often begins to show up as thinning and bald spots.
The
healing process is similar to the one that follows getting a tattoo, with light
bruising and some crusting of the skin. "Most patients look fine three
days later, and within eight days the eyebrows look great," says Epstein.
It takes about four months for the new hairs to begin to grow, and you can
expect your results to reach maximum fullness after a year. Most of Epstein’s
patients maintain their new brows not by tweezing them but by trimming every
couple of weeks.
For most,
the price of admission is a serious investment. It may vary by region, but
RealSelf estimates a median cost of $7,500 for the average eyebrow transplant
nationwide. (It may cost less if fewer follicles are needed to get your desired
result.) The ideal candidate is someone who has overtweezed or who has
genetically thin brows. However, Epstein says, it won’t work for those who have
medical conditions like alopecia.
Brow
expert Tonya Crooks, who has shaped the arches of Megan Fox and Julia Roberts,
cautions that permanent procedures, like eyebrow transplants, and semipermanent
ones, like microblading, should be considered far more soberly and seriously
than simply going in for a shaping or buying brow products. She is also wary of
transplants in general, having worked with clients who have had the procedure.
"The hairs are usually taken from your head, which is really a different
type of hair compared to the texture of your natural eyebrows," says
Crooks. "These hairs grow incredibly fast and more often than not can look
unnatural, in my experience." Other possible complications include lasting
redness and scarring of the donor site if performed incorrectly, according to
Epstein.
As with
all cosmetic procedures, the key to getting a natural-looking result is to
fully research the surgeon you choose and to view before-and-after pictures to
get a good sense of the doctor's skill. "It's important patients do their
homework and make sure the doctor has done many eyebrow transplants—if not done
properly, the results are truly problematic," says Epstein—whose patients
(80 percent!) fly in from other areas to visit his New York City and Miami
offices just for the treatment.
How to
decide if eyebrow transplants are for you? Crooks advices her clients to ask
themselves two questions: Should I try to work the best with what I have, and
are there other possible solutions that don’t involve going under the knife? If
the answer is yes, it would better to check out the brow aisle in Sephora. If
it’s no, take the time to do your due diligence on surgeons you plant to
consult.
Grace Gold
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