As I approach 40, my eyebrows are becoming more and more unruly; frequenly I’ll look in the mirror and and find that a great number of individual hairs are no longer laying horizontal, and instead have decided to curl upwards. I’m starting to resemble a Mentat.
What’s the best control strategy? Pluck the errant ones? Shave/clip all to a shorter length? I don’t want to end up looking like Bob Geldof in “The Wall,” but the Mentat thing looks equally ridiculous.
Help me find a happy medium…
This is not very manly advice, but I’ll throw it out there: consider visiting a salon for a one-time eyebrow taming. Talk to the stylist about how to maintain the new look. Plucking stray hairs as they show up is easy; doing a wholesale taming yourself is not.
Honestly, I would just go for periodic eyebrow waxing/trimming. It costs me $10 at a local nail salon, including tip, and takes about 10 minutes at the most. I don’t think $60/year is going to bankrupt you (or permanently interfere with your testosterone levels).
They don’t judge. 
I simply use a pair of electric clippers set such that I cannot shave too closely. A man looks silly without eyebrows.
Professionally done, huh? Something to think about.
I take a small pair of scissors and start with them slightly open. I’ll run the edge of one blade along the hairs, against the grain (towards my nose). The blade doesn’t touch my skin, but “floats” maybe .25 inches away. The short hairs will fall through, but the long ones get scooped up by the blade. It’s almost like I’m using the scissors to comb the longer hairs. Snip. Long lovely tresses fall elegantly into the sink.
I can definitely notice when they get too long these days. But maybe 12 years ago, I couldn’t see them at all. I wasn’t aware that they could grow long. But my then-GF told me I really needed to trim them. I thought she was daft. The long hairs just weren’t there. She nagged me and nagged me about it. So one day I decided to trim the hairs. I figured that she’d nag me again, and I could say “Ha! Gotcha! I did trim them, and you didn’t even notice!” The first time I saw her after that, it was the first thing she mentioned. And that was from about ten feet away.
Who knew?
Next time you go for a haircut just ask the stylist to trim them. That’s what they do.
I’m a girl, so maybe it’s different, but I get my eyebrows threaded professionally. I have really awful giant eyebrows left unattended and I had to maintain them myself when I was in Peace Corps and it was really a pain and they looked like crap. So much easier to pay someone to do it for me.
Heh - I haven’t been to a pro for a haircut in about nine years. I buzz my own noggin with clippers and a 3/8" or 1/2" guard, and then my wife shaves my neck for me. This is essentially what I was paying a pro to do back then, and that’s when I realized I could do it just as easily myself, saving a few bucks and avoiding the awkwardness of having to make small talk with a total stranger while she cut my hair.
Eyebrows seem easier to screw up though, so I’m not averse to visiting a pro for the job, if only to see how it’s done.
The recommendation I’ve seen is to not pluck the long (or graying/white) hairs as you might end up with weird bald spots in the brow, depending on how they cluster - trimming them shorter is much better.
Take a little comb (or just your finger) and brush the brow hairs so they point upwards. You’ll be able to see any that are abnormally long compared to the others, so trim with a fine-pointed scissors the ones that stick out past where the others seem to lay, then brush/smoosh back into place.
I shave my head with a disposable razor and get good results. But occasionally I’d rather save time and aggravation and go to Supercuts. If I get Sue (a true artist), she’ll take care of my brows and ear hairs without my even asking. And she does a better job than I can.
She does the comb thing like Ferret Herder suggests, but she uses electric clippers instead of scissors. Zip zip, she’s done.
Clarification: “upwards” meaning pointing along your forehead towards the top of your head, not straight out. Just in case that wasn’t clear.
My husband’s hair stylist does what tdn’s does, but I’d caution that’s a professional move, to actually use the clippers. One slip of the hand on your part and bzzt, you’re very lopsided.
As long as I don’t have too many, too close together, a needle-nosed pliers works pretty well for me.
You can buy an eyebrow trimmer with a built-in comb at Sephora.
http://www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P139400
It works very well.
Okay, I’ll play. brush your eyebrow hair up and trim any long ones along the eyebrow line.
pluck any hairs in the middle along your bridge - WARNING - it hurts if you are not used to it.
And then comb the eyebrows down, and trim again.
Or get them professionally done once, to see what it looks like.
I’m in the process of getting electrolysis done. As I’ve gotten older, some of the hair on my face has become coarser and longer, and a little bit noticeable. I was having my face waxed occasionally, but I decided that I’d just as soon get electrolysis done. The woman is adjusting my eyebrows, a little at a time, too. I have some hairs between the eyebrows that I’ve always plucked, and that was one of the spots that I really wanted to take care of.