I had my first permanent make up done in Hong Kong before the Internet was a resource to learn about other people´s experiences. My only contact with permanent makeup prior to having it done was in the real world, talking to ladies who had already tried cosmetic tattooing and going to permanent make up clinics to understand the procedure.

Eyebrow Tattooing - a lifestyle Choice

For me, permanent make-up was of interest for several reasons. Three factors provided the impetus for me to begin researching permanent make up and see if it would be right for me and my lifestyle:

1. First I am blond and blue-eyed with very light facial hair, light eyebrows and light lashes, which I regularly had tinted slightly darker at a beauty salon about once a month. However, I still applied makeup as usual. Tinting my brows only fixed the areas where there was hair and did nothing for the sparse brow areas where there was nothing more than fine blonde wisps that didn’t take well to dye. It seemed there were always gaps in my eyebrows which I had to fill with a pencil. I was also forever applying eyeliner, especially in the heat where makeup doesn’t last long.

2. The second reason was that swimming was my main form of exercise, often in the sea in isolated areas, but when I was in the city, I usually swam early in the morning before going to work, and then had to hurriedly apply my make up in the locker room.

3. The third element was that as a career woman I had to look good all day, everyday. Being a journalist, I couldn’t spend my time on make up and how I looked when I had serious pressing matters to attend to and deadlines to meet. As an international correspondent, I was often sent on remote assignments where I still had to look good for the camera, but where there were no beauty salons.

Cosmetic Tattooing – Finding Your Shape

In Asia, especially China, permanent make-up is very popular, almost commonplace, because Chinese women have virtually no facial hair, no eyebrows, and the most invisible lashes I have ever not seen. Most professional women (in Hong Kong and the larger cities on the mainland, as well as Japan and other urban centers in Asia) have eyebrow tattoos and permanent eyeliner just to make it appear they have lashes.

Since the art of permanent makeup originated in the East, its popularity is not at all surprising. However, at that time I was initially considering a permanent eyebrow tattoo, it was popular to have high arched brows with long slanted ends, and eyeliner that extended beyond the eye in a more theatrical “geisha girl” manner. So as I researched and observed the results of cosmetic tattooing and saw eyebrow tattoo pictures at clinics, I seriously doubted there would be a permanent make up artist who would be able to give me the natural look I wanted.

As I have said above, women’s fashion in Asia at the time was quite dramatic, with an arched brow and long extended liner around the eyes, I needed to find a clinic that would understand my need for natural. This proved much easier than I imagined because I was told that following the natural brow line is the easiest way to get eyebrows tattooed. All the clinics and eyebrow tattoo artists agreed. The women who wanted dramatic arched brows usually had ALL their natural brow removed by electrolysis first, and then had the tattoo totally replace their brows. I wasn’t interested in this and was therefore informed it would be very easy to simply follow the natural brow line without changing anything.

The first brow is always the easiest. It’s with the second one that you have to pay extra attention to because it can turn out uneven. If the natural brow shape for both brows is not the same, then it is imperative that the tattoo artist make slight corrections because the brow imperfections will become more pronounced being darker, and these slight differences in the natural brow will be accentuated and make them appear unnatural.

Eyebrow tattooing, if done with care, can correct a natural defect in the shape of a slightly crooked or flawed natural eyebrow profile.If however you find that the artist makes a mistake with your work then you might want to read some tattoo removal cream reviews to find out your options for correcting things.