I Lost My Eyebrows Because of Chemo, Now I'm Helping Design Faux Brows for Other Women

Four months into chemotherapy, nothing could really shock me. I'd seen my hair fall out in one giant clump, my pee turn a freaky shade of pink (the side effect of a blood-red chemotherapy drug called doxorubicin), and my dad cry.

I'd seen it all—or thought I had, at least, until I glimpsed a photo of myself and realized I was missing an essential part of my face. My eyebrows had finally fallen out. I guess I was so used to looking in the mirror and seeing a confidence-crushing version of myself staring back at me—bald head, skin tinged green, knobby knees—that my fading brows hadn't even registered. But without them, I looked like Gollum. And in case you think I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect, I've included photos for proof. I mean, I looked like Gollum if Gollum managed to slap a smile on his face every once in a while, but even so: I looked like Gollum. Don't lie to me.

If you didn't happen to know that certain types of chemotherapy drugs cause hair loss, come on out from under your rock and join us! Jay-Z cheated on Beyoncé. Donald Trump is president. (Actually, is there room for two under that rock?) And, yes, chemotherapy often causes hair loss. That might make you think of wigs and soft caps and colorful scarves, and no one could blame you. After all, that's exactly what I imagined when my oncologist told me that my rare liver cancer had returned and that I'd need treatment, stat. I was so busy trying to wrap my head around it that I didn't even consider the hair I'd lose everywhere else—on my legs, under my arms, on my face.

Unlike my hair, which I lost in a single clump the size of an obese rat, my eyebrows didn't all fall out at once. It was a slow evacuation. Every night, after I washed my face and patted it dry, I found little hairs strewn all over my cheeks and forehead. There were only ever four or five at a time—not enough to freak me out, but enough to make a difference.

The thing about losing your brows is that it announces to the world that you're sick. With a wig or even a layer of fuzz on your head, you can more easily hide the fact that you're being subjected to the slow and steady dismantling of your own body, by both the chemotherapy and the cancer. But without eyebrows to frame your eyes and give structure to your face, there's no hiding that something's wrong. I felt like I looked subhuman, as though I'd just crawled into the sun after spending years and years in a cave. Like Gollum.

And that one photo where my disappearing brows were especially apparent? It was from a work dinner. I cringed when I saw it. I, a beauty editor at a business event, walked around without eyebrows—and, worse, did so without even realizing it. You can't own your no-eyebrows look if you're not even aware you have no eyebrows. I sat there for an hour. I introduced myself to people. I ate shrimp and drank iced tea and made small talk like everything was normal, when, I only realized later, it was so obvious it wasn't. You'd think this wouldn't be the end of the world, especially compared to cancer, but I was embarrassed that I couldn't even get my shit together enough to look presentable. It's humiliating when everyone can figure out your medical history from a quick glance at your face.

So when Volition Beauty, a beauty company that crowdsources product ideas and actually develops the most promising ones, approached me about collaborating on replacement brows, I didn't think twice. They'd read an essay I wrote earlier this year about my experience with cancer, and thought that that, plus my work as a beauty editor, made me a good collaborator. And it did, because nothing forces you to know what you want from eyebrows like not having any. You can use a wig to hide your bald scalp. You can pile blush on your face to disguise the pallor you get from stewing under fluorescent lights for eight hours at a time. Meanwhile, I'd tried to re-create my eyebrows using my favorite tinted brow gel. With much love to Eyeko, it's the equivalent of trying to recreate a Monet painting with a purple crayon.

Volition hooked me up with a set of false brow prototypes, which I stuck onto my face using double-sided tape. By the time I was testing these, my own arches had already grown back in full. So I wandered throughout my apartment with two sets of eyebrows—my real pair and the test version—while checking them out in the mirror every so often. The double-sided tape wasn't ideal; I kept pressing them back onto my skin where the edges curled up, and I was convinced that they wouldn't make it through a downpour. Worse than no eyebrows: One fake eyebrow hanging on by a tenuous hair. So we tried lash glue instead—and it did the trick. It was so comfortable and secure that I got as far as my building's elevator before remembering that they were still attached to my forehead.

Courtesy of Volition Beauty

Now that we've figured out the best adhesive and design of the actual brows, they're ready for the Volition Beauty community to vote. If you know someone in need of eyebrows—or could use a pair yourself—rest assured that it's benefiting a good cause: 30 percent of the sales of these brows will go to Ulman Cancer Fund, which supports young adult cancer patients like myself. I chose UCF because it was through their Cancer to 5K program that I completed my first 5k race just two months after finishing chemotherapy. The Cancer to 5K running group was the closest I've ever gotten to a support group—but instead of commiserating about chemo brain (in which the drugs affect your memory, critical thinking skills, and ability to calculate the tip for dinner), we whined about doing warm-up drills in the mud.

But beyond the charitable aspect to this, I appreciate most of all that someone, somewhere, may be able to go through months and months of chemotherapy without having to look like a hobbit whose soul has been chewed away by greed and hunger for power. (I watched a lot of Lord of the Rings during treatment, okay? So sue me. Or send me fan-fic.) If I'd had replacement brows during chemo, I would've felt a lot more comfortable in my skin, in public, in front of the mirror—and at work events. So, everywhere. And the possibility that this could bring that sort of comfort to someone else is, to me, priceless.

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