Says Sam Frank, “insert Randy Johnson joke, here”. From The New York Times’ Andrew Jacobs.
In a quiet revolution sweeping the blue-collar precincts of metropolitan New York, mechanics, firemen and construction workers – most of them insistently heterosexual – are unapologetically doting on their eyebrows. Inspired by “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and the well-coiffed rap artists on BET, cowed by tweezers-wielding girlfriends and goaded by wisecracking co-workers, they are plucking and waxing as never before. And they don’t lie about it.
“Eyebrows were the last frontier,” said Louis DeJesus, a hair stylist whose Bronx salon, International Nails and Beauty, started seeing an influx of men about two years ago. “Everyone’s doing it now. And once a guy starts doing it, he gets addicted.”
From the immigrant enclaves of Queens to the minimalls of Long Island, modest salons that once catered to women find themselves inundated by primping, preening men, most of them young working-class guys who tend to spend their weekends at dance clubs. Even the Gotti brothers, the ones with their own reality television show, have embraced a minimalist approach to facial hair.
Carol Cedeno, a manicurist at Tom’s Scissorhands, a salon in Paterson, N.J., has seen the trend. “A lot of the guys used to be embarrassed, but now they just walk in and say it proudly: ‘I want my eyebrows done,’ ” she said, noting that her salon offers a wax job for $5. “Sometimes their eyebrows end up looking more dainty than their girlfriends’.”
When he first started tweezing last year, Al Bernal, a 31-year-old auto mechanic from Newark, said his friends called his sexuality into question. “They said I looked, you know, gay,” said Mr. Bernal, whose style is maintained by his fiancée. “Of course, these days they do it, too, and they love it because they get a lot more attention from chicks.”
(hard to believe this guy isn’t getting any action)
Not that RJ has a unibrow. Just that, you know, his new Yankees makeover offers options beyond the crewcut, and I hope he takes advantage of all the Big Apple has to offer.
that’s appreciated Sam, but a dude can have his eyebrows plucked in Phoenix, too.