The eyebrow transplant is the latest cosmetic treatment set to hit the UK. It’s a painful five-hour procedure that has never before been tested by a British journalist. Until now. Editor’s warning: this may make you wince
words by AVRIL MAIR
I’m lying face down on a bed in a very clean white room. I’m wearing a crisp blue gown; a proper hospital one that ties behind the neck. I’ve been lying here for an hour and, although I don’t know it yet, I’ll be lying here for four more, this time on my back, muscles tightening in protest, body growing increasingly clammy. I’m digging my nails into the palms of my hands, trying to give myself a new focus, welcoming the distraction of discomfort. I’m conscious that my heart is racing, my breathing shallow and ragged. I’m nervous. And so I should be – I’m going through one of the most dramatic and groundbreaking beauty treatments possible. I’m having an eyebrow transplant.
I’m lying here because of my own stupidity. I couldn’t leave my eyebrows alone. I trimmed, I teased and tortured my brows for years. And, in return, they stopped growing. The hair I plucked out simply refused to come back. And so I drew them in with pencil. On a trip to Tokyo I bought plastic stencils in a crazy beauty emporium. I experimented with powder, I considered tattoos, then reconsidered. I tried everything. Nothing worked. No matter how many hours I spent obsessing – and how I obsessed! – nothing looked natural. I couldn’t get my eyebrows back. I grew a fringe instead.
‘Plucking and waxing eventually damage hair follicles,’ explains Dr Ken Washenik, medical director of Bosley, the American hair replacement company that developed eyebrow transplants. ‘This means that the hair has been lost for ever.’ Oh, if only somebody had told me this earlier. But I had a mother who never wore make-up. I had no sisters or cousins. I didn’t read teen mags. I didn’t know any better. And so I overplucked my brows and am now lying face down on a bed while someone prepares me for surgery. Stupid doesn’t even begin to cover it.
The first proper eyebrow transplant was carried out in the US in the early 1990s. The procedure now accounts for just three per cent of all hair transplants, but numbers increased by 35 per cent last year and it’s rapidly gaining in popularity. It’s now the hottest beauty treatment over there, but here it’s still relatively unknown. Around 100 were carried out in the UK in 2007. Beauty editors haven’t tested it – I’m the first journalist to go through the procedure, but I certainly won’t be the last. Dr Greg Williams from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons agrees. ‘The UK is about 10 years behind the US in terms of cosmetic surgery,’ he says. ‘The eyebrow transplant wave is yet to hit here. But it will.’
It’s a painstaking procedure. The surgeon shaves a strip at the back of the head known as the ‘donor area’. Hair taken from it will behave as though it’s still growing there, no matter where else in the body it’s placed. Hair follicles are extracted from this shaved area, one at a time, and cleaned under a microscope. The doctor then creates incisions where the new eyebrows will be, leaving tiny holes angled in the direction each hair needs to grow. The individual hairs are transplanted into the holes, follicle by follicle, and between 250 and 350 are needed for each brow. Over the next month, most of this hair falls out, then regrows from the newly placed follicle a couple of months later. This hair will stay in place for ever, but because it’s head hair it will continue to grow. You’ll need to trim those new eyebrows with nail scissors once a week.
Every surgical procedure has its own particular set of challenges. Unlike ordinary hair transplants, which are now relatively easy to do, eyebrow hair grows in different directions and is much harder to replicate. It’s possible to create a whole new eyebrow or just fill out sparse brows, but as the transplanted head hair is much coarser than eyebrow hair, it can be difficult to get it to ‘match’. There are also risks of scarring and numbness afterwards. Add to that a price tag of around £2,000 and it’s not a quick fix for those who fancy this season’s fuller brow. But it was the only option for me.
