How do I give myself Spock eyebrows?

September 14, 2007 8:02 PM

How do I give myself Spock eyebrows?

I presume there's enough Star Trek fans that someone knows how to make up my eyebrows to be slanty like Spock's. But I haven't been able to google up any instructions.

Is there a somewhere I can order them online? Do I spirit gum patches of latex to my head? Any ideas?

posted by RobotHero to clothing, beauty, & fashion (8 comments total)

Something on the subject. You may or may not want to continue with your quest after the discovery it involves shaving Leonard Nimoy's eyebrows, though.
posted by sephira at 8:15 PM on September 14, 2007

Google "soaping eyebrows" for lots of information. No shaving required.
posted by jvilter at 8:38 PM on September 14, 2007

get a decent fake mustache that matches your hair color from a costume shop (6 to 12 bucks). Cut it in half, turn the mustach halves upside down and spirit gum them over your own. then, cover the edges where your own eyebrows show with base. Make sure to also get some spirit gum remover.
posted by Blingo at 8:57 PM on September 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Be careful with the soaping of the eyebrows. If you sweat a lot the soap can run and burn your eyes. I'm living proof.

"Eyebrow wax" is made for just such a thing. Don't let the name frighten you, it flattens the hair, doesn't remove it.
posted by gummi at 9:05 PM on September 14, 2007

One of the interesting things about watching original Star Trek on DVD is that you can make out all sorts of details in the image that weren't meant to be seen, and weren't when the show was originally televised. For instance, you can sometimes make out the slight bit of stubble growing in the place where Nimoy's real eyebrows would naturally grow. (Also, he wears so much rouge that he looks like a marionette. Also, random actors sometimes have an inexplicable sheen of sweat on their face, presumably due to the heat from the lights on the set.)

So, yeah--eyebrow shaving is how he did it, at least in part.
posted by Prospero at 9:11 PM on September 14, 2007

Put beeswax on your eyebrows and then cover that with a foundation that matches your skin tone and then you can either draw it eyebrows or put fake ones over the top. The beeswax helps create more of a surface for the foundation.
posted by stefnet at 10:22 PM on September 14, 2007

This thread discusses eyebrow sealing wax. To make the eyebrows temporarily disappear, and redraw with new eyebrows. Or stick Spock eyebrows on top.

The thread mentions it, and I vaguely recall it - Kevyn Aucoin's "Making Faces" book has a tutorial about redrawing the eyebrow. However, the end result won't look as authentic as Spock's, as it'll be done with an eyebrow pencil. The book's pretty cheap these days. I'm sure someone's done an online tutorial of the same technique by now. Or uploaded an illegal pdf copy of the book. Not that I would know.
posted by Xere at 3:47 AM on September 15, 2007

You can shave half of your eyebrows. My 13-year old self does not reccomend this; it can lead to a great deal of teasing the next day in school. (Actors also objected to shaving their eyebrows - this is why the guest stars playing Vulcans/Romulans often didn't have as much upsweep as Spock did, and why Romulans in TNG have those funny brow ridges).

But as mentioned above, you can use other methods of hiding your own eyebrows - I used fake skin from a halloween costume set (peachy-wax) to good effect once.

Making the new Vulcan eyebrows can be hard. I believe that the show had fake eyebrows they applied, with the same amount of detail as a good fake mustache (made with hair, etc). I wonder if better costume shops would sell anything like that, or whether a fake mustache could be cut down? I used to have a good one, but the mesh behind the hair wasn't fine enough to cut down to eyebrow size. This might also give you very bushy Vulcan eyebrows, not the fine upsweep of Spock, et al.

Some Vulcan/Romulan geeks I know will also just go with their own eyebrows, teased up somewhat with wax or something. It depends on what yours are like.
posted by jb at 2:56 PM on September 15, 2007