Editor’s note: BUM BA DA BUM BUM BAAA! That was us pretending to play a bugle, because we have a special announcement: We’re very proud to introduce our brand-new beauty expert, Jane Marie! Every month, she’ll take to O!YPT, aka this here advice column, to answer questions about makeup, hair, and other assorted matters relating to your gorgeous visages, and we’re so happy that she’s here. Damn Girl Ya Look Good will continue to take all style questions, but beauty stuff goes here now! So, without further ado, hereeeeee’s Jane!


Last April, I shaved my head and donated my hair to be made into wigs for cancer patients. I have no regrets, and a lot of people have said that short hair suits me, but it’s at an awkward length right now. Do you know any cute styles or cuts that could help me feel more confident? —Emily

That is so nice of you! Don’t you wish you could see the wig that your hair became?! They should have a social media site where you can follow your hair wherever it goes. I feel like I’ve spent a quarter of my life growing out a shaved head, because I have, so you’ve come to the right person for this!

What got to me about growing my hair out was the shagginess and unkempt feeling, not that anything looked bad, and I’m sure you also look just fine. My number one solution for any of these concerns, though, is getting the sides of your head “faded,” which means shaving them down short—it’s pretty much a tighter pixie cut. You end up with more hair on top, so as it grows out it’ll feel like length is happening quicker than if everything was growing out at the same time and you were generally shaggy all over. Go to a barber—it’ll be less than 20 bucks.

Me in 1994 (I was 16). This one took a while to grow out.

Me in 1994 (I was 16). This one took a while to grow out.

If this doesn’t sound like the right style for you, there are plenty of other amazing-looking short haircuts out there. If you, like me, enjoy scrolling for hours through pictures of beautiful ladies with covetable hairdos, go here or here and see if you can find one that you particularly admire. Print it out or save it on your phone and show it to your stylist. What if THIS is your next hairdo OMG?!

If you’d rather keep growing out the cut you have: Have you tried headbands? Maybe not the super-hard plastic ones that give you a headache, but soft elastic or fabric headbands? You can wear them over your hair, creating a faux-bang effect in front. “In front of this headband is the front part of my very short hairdo—some might call it the ‘bangs area’—and here is the back, or the ‘long part,’ duh.” Like the model in this photo.

Photo by Jennifer Gan, via Indonesian Models.

Photo of Kimmy Jayanti by Jennifer Gan, via Indonesian Models.

OR you can use a headband to push your annoying non-bangs away from your forehead. Up to you!

Another trick is drawing attention elsewhere with HUGE EARRINGS. Or necklaces. Or crazy makeups. Just have fun decorating some other part of your head while you power through this in-between-iness. You could come out the other side of this with a siiiiick NeNe Leakes–level jewelry collection!

I desperately want thick dark eyebrows like Ali Michael’s. I started growing them out, but then I realized that those eyebrows don’t look good on everyone. How can I figure out if they’ll suit me?

My general rule of thumb is that if you were born with it, it suits you. HA! Oh, I’m so sorry I just destroyed the whole beauty industry with ONE SENTENCE. Our work is done, folks! No, but I’m being serious. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with altering what you were born with and displaying a new you, version 2.0 (I’m personally on Jane, version 24.2 at this point). But if you’re asking what looks most natural on your face, it’s your face. Don’t believe the hype that something that grows off the front of your head does not look “right” on you!

Telling people to grow their eyebrows is a favorite side-project of mine. Sometimes it works out wonderfully! Here’s the great thing about hair: It (usually) grows back, AND it can be removed. This change is so low-impact it is almost of no concern. So go ahead and grow them, see if you like it, and go from there. It might take a few months, which is fine because it will also take you a few months to read Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, a crazy-riveting novel about cowboys that almost every woman I know agrees is the very best book ever written. Do that, and you can look back at your bushy-eyebrow period with fondness, regardless of whether your caterpillar-brows become butterflies or die in their cocoons. (I swear to god that analogy works in my head.)

For added inspiration, look at this photo of Brooke Shields.

brooke

See how the eyebrow on the right is encroaching dangerously upon her unibrow territory but the other one isn’t? She’s just letting it go and it looks amazing. Remember that when you feel the magnetic pull of your tweezers.