When it comes to eyebrows, you never want to go the full John Howard

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There comes a time in a man’s life when your barber will pause for a moment after the traditional short back and sides is done. There will be a brief, meaningful silence.

Perhaps your barber will snip his scissors in the air a few times. But he won’t offer. You have to ask for it. You have to understand what has happened to you. You have to front up to the truth.

Your eyebrows? They need trimming. They are no longer content with being confined. You thought you had a lifetime of reliable face punctuation? You were wrong. They want out.

When this happens to you, you will find it confronting. You know full well what will happen if it’s left unchecked. The furry caterpillars will grow, gathering force, until they become bushy. Nothing stops them there either. They can keep going until you hit full John Howard. And you never want to go full John Howard.

Former prime minister John Howard’s eyebrows hypnotised the nation.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

So you swallow your pride and give a nod. Your barber trims them as quickly as possible, so you can make your escape.

As you reel homewards, you console yourself with thoughts that it could be worse. It could be your ears deciding that now is the time to expand beyond their earthly bonds and get flappy. It could be your nose.

This should be a time for unity, where all your component parts brace for More Age. But instead, body parts go rogue. They’re jack of the whole hold-your-face-together schtick. None of this all-in-it-together socialism. For the nose, the ears and the brows, it’s time for a midlife crisis experiment with libertarianism. To hell with the body politic.

I mentioned the brow incident to a mate whose brows have not yet gone rogue. He took a moment to consider. “Are you sure this was the right call?” he inquired. Taking the piss, surely. But no. His point was this: what can bushy brows do for you? What if they signify not decrepitude, but wisdom? What if you can dismiss pesky questions from the junior burgers of the world with a simple waggle of the giant brows? Surely, this is why men of a certain vintage cultivate a beetle-browed appearance.

He had a point, though not much of one. What, after all, was the point of a beard if not to intimidate lesser mortals? (Read: rival men). That’s the evolutionary take on beards, which is sensible – the sheer ridiculousness of beards would surely rule them out of sexual selection. I refuse to believe I am part of a species where people have chosen their male partners based on their ability to sprout chin hair.

I had no need to overpower other men with my brows or beard. I was comfortable with my current level of hair. The brows had to be taught who was boss.

You might think it doesn’t matter. But it does. Your nose and brows are the prow of your ship, steering you through the world.

Every time after the barber, gazing in the mirror, I flash back to a morning in year 8 when a new kid took his first step into the common room. “Class, this is John,” our teacher said. “Make him feel at home.” We absorbed what we were seeing. Standard 14-year-old boy – except for the brows. Was that … black Texta?

He confessed everything that lunchtime. He’d trimmed his bushy brows the night before, nervous about the new school. But something had gone wrong and he’d taken too much off his left. Then he corrected on the right. A shaky hand, another slip, another correction. The only solution, he said, was to shave it bald and draw them back on with thick, black Texta.

I have rarely seen true bravery in my life. But that day, I saw it. There went John through the walkways and classrooms of his new school, his Texta’d brows leading the way. How he held it together, I will never know.

But what I do know is that the brows come for each of us. Each of us is alone as we face our faces, as our faces change. Will you succumb? Or will you fight against the Brow Rebellion? That choice is yours, and yours alone.

Doug Hendrie is a Melbourne writer.

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