For furrowed, furry and otherwise unkempt eyebrows, these divas are archenemies.
By JOHN BARRY, Deputy Floridian Editor
Published March 21, 2006
[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]
Brow divas Tara Linderman, left, and Amanda Kelly, photographed in the “Bohemian Room” at the Enchanteria Day Spa & Dreamery in South Tampa.
Lil Kim
Brows look like "wiggly worms."
Michael Jackson
Reason why a man should not acquire a woman's brows.
Colin Farrell
Tara: "Great rugged look." Amanda: "Muscular bushy brow. Almost a unibrow, but I'd take him as a work in progress."
John Travolta
Victim of the Herman Munster brow.
Madonna
Another Anastasia client.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Tara: "I'd love to get my hands on those brows."
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Tragic example of dreaded "Widow' Peak," in which brows grow to a point in the middle. For treatment, see Andy Rooney.
Steve Carell
Heavy lifting required. Falls in the virgin rain forest category.
Jennifer Lopez
Client of Anastasia, Hollywood's brow diva to the stars. Sheer perfection.
Andy Rooney
Estimated 3 inches of eyebrow. Start by waxing "his entire forehead."
Ben Stiller
Has "nice dark brows" that descend into eyelashes. Needs just a tad cleanup.
Keira Knightley
More than likely an Anastasia client. Look is "big, wide and beautiful."
Angelina Jolie
The Brow Divas say the high arch, that Angelina Jolie look, is the sexiest brow of all.
Perhaps you are a Ball and Chain. Or an Elvira. Or a Vanilla Ice. If you somehow bumped into Jennifer Lopez, it would not occur to you to say, "Wow, nice set of eyebrows." People mistake you for Andy Rooney's twin.
If so, you are what the Brow Divas call a "fresh canvas." You are a Frida Kahlo. Those bushes on your forehead are virgin rain forest. The final frontier. The Brow Divas lust after you like Exxon hungers for Alaska's North Slope.
The Brow Divas are Tara Linderman, 27, and Amanda Kelly, 23. They're best friends. They have a new spa at 2120 S MacDill Ave. called Enchanteria. Tara and Amanda became semi-famously known as South Tampa's Brow Divas while working at the Guillot Day Spa, which closed last year, leaving their 400 clients to a caterpillar plague.
Tara and her husband, Stephen, opened Enchanteria last week. Stephen does the massage therapy. Tara's mom, Paula Averill, serves as "anti-aging guru." Tara and Amanda, of course, do brows. A treatment takes about 15 minutes. The first one costs $40. Ones after that cost $25. Each involves hot wax and extraction by tweezer. The divas do not use threading. They don't approve of threading. Too imprecise a line, they say.
Wax and extraction, they say, hurt no more than removing a Band-Aid. But a Brow Diva would say that. Could be as bad as giving birth.
The mother of all Brow Divas is Romanian Anastasia Soare, who reigns over Beverly Hills and does Oprah. She also does Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Lucy Liu, Penelope Cruz, Naomi Campbell, practically everyone who has been named People magazine's America's Sexiest Anything. Tara trained with Anastasia for a week about two years ago.
The Brow Divas recently talked about highbrows, lowbrows and unibrows.
What divaesque qualities do you possess? Do you have three divorces each? Do you talk to God?
Tara: We're not like that at all.
Amanda: She's a perfectionist and she can arch her brow.
Tara: True. I can arch my brow. That definitely gives me an edge. I can just lift my brow and get my point across.
Amanda: I can't do it. She does it to me and I say, "I see the brow!"
Did either of you ever, at any time in your life, have a unibrow?
Tara: Ohhhh, I'm Italian! But it was a long time ago. And I always kept it well maintained.
Amanda: I had the really skinny brow, like Christina Aguilera. Tara begged me to let her fill it in.
Tara: I told her, "Please, Amanda, let's grow your brows!"
Are people more 'brow aware' these days?
Amanda: Well, yes, but men don't want to look like they've been done. No arch, no sculpture.
If a guy asked you out, but he had a unibrow, would that be a deal breaker?
Amanda: Yes! In the dating world, a unibrow is the worst possible offense. Especially in South Tampa.
Why South Tampa?
Amanda: Because I live in South Tampa.
Tara: Be it man or woman, no one should have a unibrow.
Even Frida Kahlo?
Tara: That's a difficult question. She was very beautiful the way she was. But I would have a hard time ignoring it if she came in for a facial.
Amanda: I would wait for her to fall asleep and gently pluck.
Tara: For most people, the unkempt brow creates a certain perception.
Amanda: It shows where their priorities are.
Tara: Overdoing it is another story. Like the Christina Aguilera Skinny Brow.
Amanda: Or the Ball and Chain. That's a brow that's thick in the beginning, but gets skinny. People who try to create a high arch sometimes get a Ball and Chain.
Tara: These are the negatives we have to fix.
Amanda: My poor mother has plucked her eyebrows so long she has the Dracula eyebrow, that pointy Elvira look.
Tara: You shouldn't say that about your mother.
Amanda: Oh, Mom loves me. But no one taught her.
Tara: Another bad one is the McDonald's Arch. It starts way down and goes way up.
Amanda: And the Vanilla Ice. That means slashes in the middle. That usually happens accidentally. We sometimes fix other people's mistakes.
Is a bad brow job like a bad haircut? The worst is over in two weeks?
Amanda: It can take a least a month for bad brows to grow out. Sometimes up to six months.
What's the sexiest brow of all?
Tara: The high arch, that Angelina Jolie look, if you have the bone structure and the muscular structure for it.
Do the men in your life reap the benefits of brow divadom?
Amanda: I must say my boyfriend is blessed. I helped him with the middle part.
Tara: My husband is so blond, I tinted him a little. It changed his whole face. He also let me wax his chin.
Husband Stephen yells from across the room: "That wasn't my idea!"
Tara: (sighs, divalike) The chin wax was an experiment.
