Eye spy

If I were a cat, my breed would not be a Sphynx. Hairlessness isn’t in my DNA.

What could evoke such an unusual start to a blog post, you may wonder? Too much sun, perhaps? “She’s a dog person,” you say. “Why in the world would she ever want to be a cat?”

I don’t. Cats make me sneeze. And they’re too moody like people.

In fact, the Sphynx reference stems from something called a “writing prompt,” put forth by my writers group instructor, whom we fondly call Anastasia Beaverhausen (“AB,” to her face) for reasons I cannot go into.

Our regular Wednesday two-hour Zoom sessions have given each of us something to look forward to over these past several months amid the ongoing pandemic. Also, it allows us to see whose hair is most unruly. One day we all wore hats. That was a hoot.

A writing prompt can be a single word, a short phrase or even a picture, that provides a potential topic idea or starting point for a writer. Prompts help to inspire writers and get their creative juices flowing.

Here’s last week’s writing prompt: “your favorite body part.”

As one of our group’s most prolific members said, “Gross!”

Indeed, like most women of a certain age, I do not particularly like much about my body, including its hairiness. Sadly, an inordinate amount of body hair was predetermined by my ethnicity.

One Italian mother plus one Syrian father equals one hairy child. For example, if I shave my legs in the morning, by afternoon I have a 5 o’clock shadow. I must shave my underarms every day without fail.

Frankly, I have clogged more than a few drains in my lifetime.

Then there’s the mustache. My hairdresser Najah used to hot wax it off, but I got tired of waiting three days to go out in public without a fiery red upper lip. Plus, she enjoyed it a bit too much.

I underwent laser treatments at my dermatologist’s office. After paying the equivalent of a kidnapper’s ransom, I stopped. It was torture, plus I yelled curse words I never knew I knew.

Before we parted, I told the adept esthetician she should be an interrogator for the CIA because she’d make grown men cry and crack any spy like an egg.

That’s when she gave me some professional advice in her best Natasha from “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” voice: “Do not let anyone touch eyebrows, dahlink. They are purr-fect.”

There’s a fine line between pleasure and pain. That compliment was almost worth the agony. Plus, I half-expected Natasha’s cartoon boyfriend Boris Badenov to show up.

So I’d have to say the one part of me I’d put on the “favorite” list are my eyebrows. The valance to the windows of my soul. Guess that’s two parts, unless you’ve got a unibrow, which I’ve only experienced once. OK, twice.

I am happy to report that my eyebrows have remained purr-fect during the pandemic, unlike the Miracle Mop on my formerly pretty little head.

I’m guessing my eyebrows were inherited from my mother, which isn’t a major leap since my father’s manly brows looked like reflections of those black smudges football players put under their eyes to mitigate bright sun or stadium lights.

Dad’s eyebrows wouldn’t have rivaled Groucho Marx’s, which were literally accented with grease paint. (Shocker.) But the original Jimmy John’s bushy, dark ones would have given him a run for some serious cash money.

Mom’s movie-star eyebrows, on the other hand, were perfect. I don’t think she ever groomed them. That subtle, believable arch, that added just enough sass to her natural class. Elia Guella’s eyebrows were nicely shaped and even. Sort of like actress Dorothy Dandridge’s but somewhat darker and less tapered.

Not perfectly arched like Lauren Bacall’s, but softer, like Elizabeth Taylor’s. Not thin, penciled-in brows like Greta Garbo’s or rounded like Joan Crawford’s. Remember how she’d raise one with that look of haughty disdain? Ouch.

Who knew a few hundred hairs above the eyes could convey so much emotion?

Back to my purr-fect eyebrows. Like my mother, I don’t need to do much to them. An occasional pluck, a tiny trim, especially on the left, which likes to sprout an errant gray spike every so often.

Did you know Whoopi Goldberg’s eyebrows are nonexistent? Completely shaved off. Pretty bold statement. I couldn’t do it.

Maybe the next time my left brow’s stray gray emerges I’ll leave it and make my own statement.

But why mess with perfection?