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- With the popularity of bold, natural-looking eyebrows, brow-boosting beauty products are on the rise. These products include pencils, powders, gels, stencils, and brow mascaras — all designed to enhance and exaggerate the natural shape of the brow.
- Even though there are many luxury products in the category, NYX Professional Makeup Tinted Brow Mascara, which is under $8, is one of the best on the market.
- It comes in five shades, from blonde to black, and boasts an easy-to-use and long-lasting formula.
NYX Tinted Brow Mascara Check price at Amazon Brow pencils, filling powders, arch-shaped stencils, quick-dry gels… there's no shortage of eyebrow-accentuating products on the market, and I've tried nearly all of them on my quest for bushy, beautiful brows.
The product-laden path to better brows is not one I walk alone, though. When the thin, overly-plucked look of the nineties and early aughts gave way to today's bold, natural arches, it was fashion's cruelest joke. Those of us who had waxed, plucked, and picked our brows clean back in the day (side note: why did we do that?) suddenly couldn't grow them back. Cue the influx of brow-boosting beauty products.
Read more: 3 simple steps to getting Instagram-perfect eyebrows
I'm not what you would call a discerning consumer. I've had nearly-bald eyebrows for over 10 years (the consequence of stress-related hair loss) and will literally try anything that promises to deliver a killer pair of face-framing arches. Anything including, but not limited to...Sporting a haircut with bangs — even though they're hard to style and make my forehead oily — in an effort to conceal my bald brows; getting fake eyebrows microbladed onto my forehead — a process that involves carving short, hair-like strokes into the brow bone with a blade and filling them with permanent ink; slathering the area in castor oil every night (I've heard it makes hair grow faster); penciling on a quick pair of eyebrows before bed at my boyfriend's place so that he wouldn't know what I really looked like; putting together a three-ingredient cocktail of expensive brow products (powder, gel, and clear mascara) to apply religiously every single morning, even for trips to the grocery store.
To say that I've spent thousands of dollars in an attempt to solve my bald brow problems is a conservative estimate — which makes it all the more ironic that the one product I've come to love above all others totals less than $8.
I'll admit I was skeptical when I first stumbled upon NYX's Tinted Brow Mascara. I had tried other brow mascaras before, and found most of them to be too pigmented and hard-drying to look natural — but at $7.50, I couldn't exactly say no, could I? The product comes in five shades, and I chose the color "Espresso" — a dark brown on the edge of black.
Using it for the first time, I couldn't help comparing it to Glossier's Boy Brow (a cult-favorite brow mascara that's basically the industry standard for natural eyebrows). Personally, I thought Boy Brow was fine; but I had to layer it over something else, like pencil or powder, to get the coverage I needed. I expected a cheaper version of the same from NYX — but instead, it was love at first swipe.
The NYX Tinted Brow Mascara features a spoolie almost twice the size of Boy Brow's, large enough to cover the entire brow area in a single motion. In addition to grabbing and coating every single hair — even the light, baby-thin ones that you barely even know are there — the spoolie disperses the sheerest hint of color on the skin under the brow, adding definition and dimension; this, for me, is the key to natural-looking arches. The formula is heavy on the wax (it's made with beeswax and candelilla wax, among others), which means it has staying power without that hard, crunchy finish you typically see with brow gels. After a single day of use (the mascara stayed put for eight hours, even during a workout), I knew I'd never need anything else.
It's helped me develop a foolproof, 10-second technique for natural-looking brows, too. First, I use the freshly-dipped spoolie to brush the few brow hairs I do have upwards, starting from the inner corner and working my way outward. Next, I backcomb the brow, which ensures every single hair (and the skin underneath) picks up some pigment. Finally, I swipe outwards over the entire area to set the look in place. Brush, brush, brush, go.
The bottom line
The rest of my brow-centric beauty products have since been banished to the back of a bathroom drawer — and I don't miss them at all.
Even though the applicator, shade range, and formulation of NYX Tinted Brow Mascara are, in my opinion, unmatched, the thing I love most about it is that it makes me feel normal. With a coat of this on my brows, I'm not that anxious girl desperate to cover her forehead with bangs, or the woman who spends 30 minutes in front of the mirror each morning. One quick swipe transforms me into the low-maintenance, easy-going person I've always wanted to be: me, just with better brows.
Check price at Amazon Jessica DeFino Freelance ReporterYou can purchase logo and accolade licensing to this story here.
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