Before my powder brows experience, the last time I let anyone touch my eyebrows was in sixth grade.

It was a cold, rainy day, and I sat in a salon chair in a children’s modeling school shaking in my Limited Too jumper while a 16-year-old girl leaned toward me, clicking her tweezers as she examined my 12-year-old eyebrows. Her name was Brandy. Her only beauty credential was that she’d won the Miss New England Perfect Teen pageant. Her technique was to pluck mercilessly until my brows formed two slim hills of single-file hairs.