Eyebrow fashion might change often, but there are some brow shapes that should just never happen! The problem with bad brows is that they are quite difficult to fix, as once you pluck the hairs out, it can be hard for them to grow back.
One such brow disaster that some people experience is sperm eyebrows. Sperm eyebrows, as the name suggests, look like large sperm shapes, and they never look great!
If you have over-plucked your eyebrows or trusted someone else to do your eyebrows who you probably shouldn’t have, you might need some help.
What are sperm eyebrows, and how do you fix them? Sperm eyebrows occur when the inner brow is rounded and large, then becomes much thinner moving out towards your temples, much like the shape of sperm. There are some ways to fix sperm brows by filling in your brow shape a little.
If you are currently experiencing sperm brows, and need some help on how to fix them, keep reading!
Sperm Shaped Eyebrows
Sperm eyebrows are not something you ask for at your local beauty salon, unless you’re living in the 90s. Also known as tadpole brows, sperm eyebrows occur when brows have not been shaped properly, or you have plucked too much and have ended up with a less than desirable shape.
Much like the shape of sperm or a tadpole, sperm brows have a rounded, large head and a long thin tail trailing from it.
These brows are often created when you are trying to give yourself a beautiful, natural-looking arch, but don’t know when to stop waxing or plucking, and the arch gets thinner and thinner, and the more you try to fix it, the worse it gets.
As distressing as it might be to look in the mirror and see two sperm brows looking back at you, there are some ways to fix them.
The 90s Sperm Eyebrows Trend
The bushy eyebrow trend of the previous decades faded in the 90s, and thin brows were back. This new style was thin with low arches, and encouraged women to pluck their brows into oblivion to look like perfectly manicured cover models.
This over-plucking often went without check and trying to achieve Kate Moss-like thin brows landed many women in a position where they had thinned out their arches far too much, and left themselves with sperm brows.
Thankfully, thicker brows have been all the rage in the past decade, so over-plucking has not been too much of a problem leading up till now. However, back in the 90s, it was not uncommon to spot one or two sperm brows out and about!
While we are not in the 90s anymore, thin brows are making a bit of a comeback, and it is causing women to start plucking again. But be warned, once you start, it can be difficult to know where to stop if you son’t know what you’re doing!
How To Avoid Sperm Eyebrows
Before you even get to the point of having to deal with sperm eyebrows, it is worthwhile to know exactly how to avoid them. The best way to avoid sperm eyebrows is to go to a reputable beauty salon that can give you the exact brow look that you are hoping for.
However, if you are nervous about going to see someone and would rather do your brows at home on your own, following a simple guide on how to pluck your own eyebrows can help you avoid sperm brows!
Here is a quick and simple guide on how to avoid sperm brows when plucking and shaping your eyebrows at home:
What you need:
- Mirror
- Tweezers
- Good lighting
Tips before you start:
- Make sure the light you are using is bright enough to highlight any light hairs that may escape your view under dim lighting. If you can use a mirror in front of bright LED light or natural light, this will be the best way to see what you’re doing.
- Make sure you are using a good pair of tweezers, even if you have to buy a new pair. Tweezers that do not grip onto hair or which break your hair instead of plucking it will not give you the results you want, make the process more painful, and are difficult to work with.
- Pin back your hair so that it does not fall into your face while you are shaping your eyebrows.
- Brush your eyebrows straight up. If there are any long hairs, trim them down. Use an eyebrow brush to push these hairs up and use a small pair of scissors to trim them down.
- Decide on the shape of the brows you are wanting to achieve. You cannot start shaping your brows if you have no end goal in mind, and doing so will only lead to an eyebrow disaster!
How To Pluck Eyebrows:
- Start by washing your face with some warm water. It is essential for your face to be clean, and warm water also helps to relax and soothe your skin and hair follicles, which makes plucking eyebrow hair easier. Pat your face dry with a clean towel.
- You can gently tone the eyebrow area before plucking, but this is up to you. It just helps to ensure that your skin is perfectly clean. Use a cotton pad and a gentle toner to do this.
- To help avoid plucking hairs that do not need to be removed, you can take a white eyeliner pen and mark all of the hairs that need to be removed. You could also trace your preferred eyebrow shape. Then you’ll be targeting any hairs that lie outside the outline. Whichever method you choose, step back to make sure your chosen shape is symmetrical on both sides.
- You can now begin tweezing your eyebrows. Hold your skin taut and remove hairs below your arch. Place the tweezers as low down towards the base of the hair as you can, and pull in the direction of hair growth. Pulling against it can cause bumps and irritation to occur.
- Before moving to another section of the eyebrow, do the same section on the other eyebrow. This means you can match up the shape as you go.
- Once you have shaped the arch, you can remove hair from the top of your brow. Only remove hair that absolutely needs to go, which is growing above the brow line. Do this for both eyebrows.
- Next, clean up the middle section between the two brows, plucking out any stray hairs and giving more definition to your brows. Don’t forget your temples!
- Stand back and look into the mirror, checking to see that both brows are balanced and look even –they do not have to be identical, but they should look very similar.
- Sit back down and remove any more hairs that are needed to balance out the brows, and then remove any finer hairs that are left behind.
- Gently tone the eyebrow area with a soothing and cleansing toner.
Remember that before you get started with tweezing, you need to have an idea of the shape you are wanting to achieve. Going in and tweezing eyebrows without knowing the shape you are after is what leads to over-plucking, and ultimately this could lead to sperm brows!
There are plenty of guides online which can help you find the perfect shape for your face.
How To Fix Sperm Eyebrows
If you have already given yourself some sperm brows, don’t stress too much. Yes, they might look strange now, but there is a way to fix them, and no, it is not by picking up the tweezers again!
The best way to fix sperm eyebrows at home is to fill them in by yourself. This might take some practice to get right, but once you get the hang of it, you will be able to give yourself natural and believable-looking brows.
How to fill and shape sperm eyebrows:
- Brush an eyebrow gel through your brows, brushing upwards to give them a lift. However, avoid brushing so aggressively that they stand straight up.
- Choose the right eyebrow pencil to use to fill in your brows. It is a good idea to use a lighter color than the actual color of your brows in order to get the right shape down first before you darken them. Even dark brunette or black brows could do with ashy colors to start off with, rather than a black pencil. Lighter brows similarly need a lighter pencil or even a powder that can be brushed through.
- Start at the edge of your brow, closest to your nose, where the head of the sperm brows would be. Apply short, gentle strokes to this section, moving along the direction of the hair. Start filling in gaps in the ‘tail’ of the brow, giving more volume and texture.
- Do not apply too much brow pencil to the head of your brows, as these will only be more pronounced and stand out more. Gently blend the color into the tail so it looks more natural, and give more attention and definition to building the tail of your brows.
- Use short diagonal strokes to fill in the tail and the arch, and do a final extension to the end of the brow to give the final shape.
- If you find that your eyebrows are shaped correctly but are now too light, you can go in with a slightly darker eyebrow pencil and darken them a bit with light strokes.
This will give you thicker tails and arches and will subdue the sperm eyebrow shape. Just remember not to apply too much pencil to the head of the eyebrows, which will only make it seem bigger and more pronounced. Instead, just gently stroke some color in there to allow it to blend with the rest of your brow.
Do not overdo the pencil either, you want to fill in your brow to remove the sperm eyebrow shape, not completely draw on new eyebrows!
Permanent Options To Fix Sperm Eyebrows
For when you have plucked your eyebrows one time too many into a sperm eyebrow shape, and you cannot get them to grow back normally, and you do not want to have to manually fill in your brows every time you leave the house, you might want to look at a more permanent solution.
There are some great options out there that professionals at salons offer to give you a more permanent solution to sperm eyebrows and give you gorgeous looking natural brows instead. Here are a few of those options:
Microblading
Microblading is rapidly growing in popularity, and more and more women are using it as their go-to brow treatment. It is a semi-permanent eyebrow treatment that uses micro-pigmentation to fill in brows and build shape.
This is a good option if you are wanting to build on your brow shape or if your brows have lost shape and definition altogether. A professional will measure your brow dimensions and draw on the ideal brow shape for your face, then implant pigments into the top layer of skin using a small blade, like a tattoo.
These tiny little strokes created by the microblading look like tiny hair strokes, and look incredibly natural too!
Powder Brows
Powder brows are created using a method similar to traditional tattooing, where thousands of small dots of pigment are inserted into the skin. The layering of these tiny dots builds up the shape and color of the brows and ultimately builds natural-looking, beautiful brows.
This method is more permanent than microblading and is suitable for almost all skin types. You can have touchups over time, but the results are long-lasting.
What Causes Sperm Eyebrows?
The most common cause of sperm eyebrows is over-plucking. You try to shape your arch and keep removing more and more hair until there is hardly anything left, and these arches then look like little tails to the larger head of the brows.
However, these brows can also be created by bad salons who aren’t so great at what they do, which could be even more frustrating seeing as though you paid for the service!
These are some of the other reasons why sperm brows might occur:
- Brows that have not been properly shaped
- Over-plucked or over-waxed eyebrows
- Thinning eyebrows
Whatever the reason, sperm brows are more common than you think!
Overview
Sperm eyebrows will always be around as long as we lack the self-control to put the tweezers down when plucking eyebrows at home.
As odd as they might appear, there are several ways that sperm brows can be fixed, and ways that they can be avoided in the first place.
It is always best to trust the professionals with your brows, but always make sure to research the salon first to ensure that other customers have had good experiences!
If you are determined to do your brows at home on your own, follow the above steps and tips to ensure you give yourself beautifully groomed and natural-looking brows, and you don’t take the plucking too far.
Related Questions
Does Plucking Eyebrows Permanently Damage Hair Follicles?
Plucking your eyebrows to groom them does cause some damage to the hair follicles, but the hair can regrow back after around 6-8 weeks. Over-plucking can cause permanent damage and can end up changing the shape of your brows for good.
How Do You Fix A Bad Eyebrow Job?
The best way to fix a bad eyebrow job is to use an eyebrow pencil or powder to fill in gaps and give eyebrows a better shape and more definition.
Can Vaseline Make Eyebrows Look Thicker?
Coating Vaseline on your eyebrows won’t make them grow, but it will make the hairs appear thicker, and help them stay in place, which will give eyebrows a thicker appearance overall, and fill out the shape and definition of your brows. Vaseline is also a cheaper alternative to eyebrow gel!
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