The Eyebrow That Gets Me Into Trouble
The Eyebrow That Gets Me Into Trouble
I learnt young that you don’t have to answer back to answer back.
Two raised eyebrows, wide eyes and a mildly cocky head tilt will do it.
Adults spot this instantly. You can stand there in total silence, doing exactly as you’re told, while your face says, Are you actually serious?
Apparently, that still counts as attitude.
Unfortunate, as I had plenty.
Over the years, I’ve learnt some useful skills. When to keep my mouth shut. Mostly. That not every ridiculous statement needs a response. Also mostly.
That it’s occasionally better to let somebody finish talking before deciding they’re an idiot.
That last one took a while.
What I’ve never learnt is how to stop my face joining the conversation.
My face is a live news ticker.
BREAKING: Man continues explaining despite several visual warnings.
DEVELOPING: Eyebrow now raised.
Sources close to the mouth say a verbal response may be imminent.
UPDATE: Eye roll confirmed. Situation deteriorating rapidly.
LATEST: Mouth has opened. We go live to the scene.
It has broadcast without editorial control for most of my life.
The eyebrow evolved
As a child, I don’t remember having one expressive eyebrow. It was a full-face operation. Both eyebrows up, eyes wide, head tilted, message sent.
Primitive technology. Highly effective.
Then the system upgraded.
The eye roll arrived, obviously. Useful, but not without consequences. Then one eyebrow discovered it could work alone.
A breakthrough.
Why waste an entire expression when one eyebrow can say I don’t believe you, that’s complete bollocks, you can’t possibly believe that yourself or carry on, this should be interesting?
It’s punctuation for the face.
It came in very handy when I had children.
Some parenting moments need patience and careful explanation. Others need one look from their mother, halfway through an increasingly ridiculous rant, to make them rethink the direction of travel.
Mine are adults now.
The eyebrow still works.
Some technology never goes obsolete.
Adulthood demands facial diplomacy
This gets harder when you’re meant to be professional.
There are plenty of places you can’t say what you’re thinking. Meetings. Clients. Managers. Relationships. People explaining things you already know. People explaining things they clearly don’t.
That last group is the real test.
You learn restraint.
Or at least your mouth does.
I spent years in corporate life, where there are expectations about what you say and what your face does while somebody else says it.
This seems unreasonable.
I’ve turned up. I’m dressed appropriately. I haven’t told anyone to fuck off.
Surely there’s some flexibility in the service-level agreement.
I once sat in a meeting on new operational standards and quality monitoring. People were about to be assessed against a long list of internal criteria. I asked why we were measuring all that without asking what the customer actually thought.
The rationale was explained to me again.
Because clearly, I just hadn’t understood it the first time.
I still didn’t agree.
At some point, I rolled my eyes.
My boss stopped.
“Did you just roll your eyes?”
There are moments when a quick lie would make life so much easier.
Sadly, I’m hopeless at lying when someone asks me a direct question to my face.
“Yes.”
So much for diplomacy.
In my defence, I was honest. My face had already submitted the evidence anyway.
Then Teams invented the facial mute button
Working remotely gave me something real life never had.
The ability to turn my face off.
Forget screen sharing. Forget virtual backgrounds. This was the real innovation.
On a video call, a camera can develop problems.
Mine has occasionally been “not working”.
Once or twice I’ve had an unfortunate “eye infection” and felt nobody needed to look at me that day.
Remarkably, these technical and medical difficulties tend to strike when I know someone is about to say something requiring more facial control than I can guarantee.
It wasn’t dishonesty.
It was risk management.
Possibly safeguarding.
With the camera off, I can listen perfectly well while my face does whatever it likes.
In real life, I’ve had to build my own version.
I’m a great believer in eye contact. If someone is talking to me, I look at them.
Unless I know that would open the full communications channel.
Then I become oddly fascinated by something outside the window. My foot needs urgent inspection. A previously unremarkable patch of carpet becomes gripping.
I’m still listening.
I’m just in audio-only mode.
Again, safeguarding.
The irony of the eyebrow
The funniest part is that my eyebrows are now barely fucking there.
Like many women of my generation, I plucked them to near extinction.
Nobody warned us they might not grow back.
Apparently, eyebrows hold grudges.
Then came years of microblading, followed by powder brows. Those have faded too.
My eyebrows have had more restoration work than a listed building.
So every morning, I draw the bloody things back on.
Not the old single pencil line. I have a little angled, forked pen that makes tiny hair-like strokes. It takes seconds and looks natural enough that nobody would know.
The feature that has broadcast my opinions for decades is now partly handmade.
I’ve spent half my life being betrayed by an eyebrow I now have to draw on myself.
It’s not purely vanity. I’m so fair that without them I look vaguely unfinished. Possibly recently deceased.
They’re also essential equipment. Without them, half my vocabulary is missing.
Essentially, I reinstall my personality every morning.
And I have to get it right.
One wonky eyebrow and the whole message changes. I’m trying to say I question the validity of that statement and accidentally broadcasting I’ve just been startled by a pigeon.
My face is not sorry
There have been times I’ve behaved impeccably.
My face was not consulted.
At 62, I don’t expect that to change.
I’m better at choosing which thoughts need saying. I care far less about pointless arguments. I can hear opinions I disagree with and feel no urge to fix them.
That’s probably maturity.
Or tiredness.
Either way, it’s much quieter.
But I won’t spend the rest of my life arranging my face into pleasant agreement when pleasant agreement isn’t what I’m feeling.
Sometimes the eyebrow goes up.
Sometimes the eyes widen.
Sometimes there’s an unmistakable look that says, Really?
And sometimes I stare out of the window because I know exactly what my face is about to say and, frankly, I’m being considerate.
The technology has improved since childhood. The two-eyebrow head tilt became the eye roll, the eye roll became the precision eyebrow, and Teams added emergency broadcast suspension.
But the system underneath hasn’t changed.
My mouth has learnt diplomacy.
Sometimes.
My face remains live. Viewer discretion advised.