Allure
Salon Safety
How Covid-19 Is Changing the Eyebrow Threading Industry
—Leah Prinzivalli
Recently, Umbreen Sheikh, founder and CEO of Wink Brow Bar in New York City, hit me with one of the hardest questions I've had to answer during the pandemic: Would you rather get a manicure or get your eyebrows done?
As anyone who has spent the past few months under stay-at-home orders may have noticed, eyebrows grow fast. It only takes a week or two of ignoring the brows before you have a whole new brow shape, a feather you never asked for, or if you're like me, two brows that start to grow into one. Customers have gotten so desperate that brow artists […] have started offering virtual brow appointments.
But as Sheikh tells me, it's dangerous and difficult to thread one's own brows at home. If brow threading — a technique that uses a single piece of cotton thread (held in the mouth of the threader) to twist and pull areas of unwanted hair from the root — is your preferred maintenance route, you're left with another question: Should I make an appointment amid a pandemic?
Technically, in many states across the country, it's currently possible to book any in-person beauty service you want. Nail salons, brow bars, and other personal-care services have slowly reopened. Depending on your location, beauty establishments may have been open for a few months or a few weeks. In New York City, for example, personal-care businesses were allowed to reopen on July 6; in Ohio, doors opened on May 15. Across the country, beauty business owners have been forced to reconsider basic practices like beverage service, waiting room etiquette, and the number of clients allowed in the salon. Eyebrow threaders have an extra concern: Their livelihood necessitates getting inches away from a client's face, and often, thread is held in the mouth during the service.
Before you answer Sheikh's beauty lovers' version of Would You Rather, read up on all the details about how the threading community is responding to the pandemic — and health experts' advice on getting back to the salon.
