This $7 beauty hack will truly transform your brow game
Forget laminating, expensive treatments, and $52 brow gels.
Welcome to Good for the Geezer — a new series where some of our favs evangelize some of their favs right to your inbox. Just like OG episodes of the podcast! Want to hear new podcast eps (every Monday)? Here you go!
Our first edition of Good for the Geezer is from one of our Gee Thanks! sweethearts, Ammie Williams. You may know her for her viral, always-sold-out rainbow mugs, her crunchy Hobonichi planners, the way she makes you want to buy tons of fun art supplies despite being Bad At Art (just me?), or her girlfriend Elaine (ELAINE!!).
I know her as my friend, and I love her. I asked Ammie to tell us about her eyebrow game, which is unreal despite not having them professionally laminated or spending mucho dinero on products. Take it away, Ammie!
I stopped waxing my eyebrows several years ago.
I hated the time it took and the pain involved (I am baby) and with my giant glasses and bangs combo, you couldn’t really see them anyway. Then my bangs grew out during the pandemic — revealing a forehead and eyebrows — and all of a sudden I started caring again.
But not enough to return to waxing.
This is how my journey with brow gels begins.
Here’s what I tried that didn’t work:
Glossier’s Boy Brow was my gateway into brow gels and it’s great if you’re just dipping your toe in. I came to find the wand was too tight for my thick brows and I could never get as much on the brush as I wanted.
Next, I tried Maybelline’s Express Brow and loved the wand, but the product was hard to control and the tint often ended up above my eyebrows and streaking when I would try to wipe it off. It was a mess.
After that, I tried Merit’s Beauty Brow. I love Merit and think this is a great product, but it helped me realize that I don’t need tinting in my brow gel.
I tried out ELF’s Brow Lift but the product sits on my face weirdly, often smudging off on my glasses and greasing up the top of my lenses.
One afternoon while doing research on Soap Brows (i.e., scrolling Tik Tok in bed), I came across a girl with the best brows I’d ever seen. They were thick but tamed, full, but not drawn on. I assumed she was doing the soap thing (remember? They were literally using soap!) but was shocked to see the product was your run-of-the-mill drugstore hair gel.
Her tutorial was simple: Stick the spoolie in the bottle and swipe onto your brows. Before she’d finished the video I’d ordered a 100 pack of spoolies (for $5! So cheap!) and a cheapie tube of Got2be hair gel from Target. You know! The kind that all of our 2000s crushes were using to spike up their frosted tips.
It takes a couple tries to get it right.
The key is a small amount of product and working quickly, spending around 30 seconds max for each brow. If you wait too long or go too slowly, the gel starts to dry and can flake.
I squeeze a bead of gel out and dab my spoolie into the gel (or if the tube is low, sticking my whole spoolie in).
I remove excess by wiping against the top of the tube so the product isn’t wasted. I want to make sure that the bristles are coated but if I can see gel sitting on top of the bristles, it’s too much product.
I start by back combing my brows to get the product in there, then I begin brushing up and over, moving towards my ear.
I run through this step a couple times until I feel like the hairs aren’t too spiky and the shape looks good.
Then I repeat on the next brow.
I occasionally go the extra step and flip the spoolie around to the opposite side and flatten my brows down if I really want a laminated look.
It may take a second to get past the feeling of having gel in your brows but the look and wear is worth it for me. My brows stay put all day, but because it’s hair gel, it washes out easily with warm water.
Got2b hair gel as brow gel is my favorite beauty hack that you will always find in my makeup routine!
Thanks, Ammie! Keep an eye on your inbox for more Good for the Geezer recs!
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