Really? Because I Don't Know...

"If I had Alice Bell's crooked nose," said Anne decidedly, "I wouldn't---but there! I won't say what I was going to because it was extremely uncharitable. Besides, I was comparing it with my own nose and that's vanity. I'm afraid I think too much about my nose ever since I heard that compliment about it long ago. It really is a great comfort to me." --Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 26

Whether admitted or not, I think everybody is particularly proud of at least one aspect of their appearance. I mean, think about it, there has to be at least one thing you're proud of when you leave the house in the morning. The reason we all glance at windows we walk past to check out our reflection (or am I the only one who does that?).

My reason to check myself out in windows is not my eyebrows.

We all inherit our family members' physical traits, and I was cursed to inherit my uncle Ryan's bushy eyebrows. They look like this:

Ryan with then baby (now cute little girl) Ava Rose

 Notice their thick shape. Hopefully Ava got her mom's brows. I also inherited his charming wit and cleverness (commonly found in all Mittons), but sadly those do not sit on my forehead. Just the bushy brows. Those ones that added to my self-consciousness when I didn't know how to do my hair and my skin would break out constantly. I mean, seriously, very few people like how they look in high school, and if you have so much to deal with do you really have to have bad eyebrows too?? It's just too much.

Ironically, my brother was gifted with beautiful brows. He's a BOY. Why, universe, why?

Bad picture of our faces, but excellent shot of Tanner's eyebrows

If you looked at that picture of us in our Oregon Coast glory and said to yourself, "Why, her eyebrows aren't that bad at all!" it's called adding 5 minutes to the morning routine to use tweezers, people. I'm a GIRL.

What I've wanted more than anything, in regard to my eyebrows, is to have those of Vivien Leigh. She has, hands down, the best eyebrows a woman could possibly imagine. They are so expressive. Look at them:

I can talk with my eyes, but if I had eyebrows to go with them? Man.

So I've carried this insecurity for years, and for years I never admitted to it except to my mother. Then, almost two years ago (two years already? how?), I was sitting on a bus driving through the Galilee, listening to a conversation occurring in the seat behind me. Two beautiful girls were chatting, and one was telling the other all of the attractive physical features she had noticed in the other members of our Jerusalem family. She was going through the list and I was nodding in agreement, when all of the sudden she said, "And Allison has beautiful eyebrows."

What? Really? I do?

You think my eyebrows are beautiful?

She was my roommate in the Galilee and when we got back to the kibbutz that night I confessed that I had been listening to her conversation and she reaffirmed her previous assessment of my eyebrows. I don't think I'd ever felt so flattered.

But are they as good as Vivien Leigh's?