00:00Not knowing is scary.
00:02People get nervous about it being chemicals,
00:05but it is just a relaxer for the eyebrow hair.
00:13I'm Mikaela Williams,
00:14and I'm getting brow lamination done today.
00:16When I was in elementary school,
00:18people used to always make fun of me for my eyebrows.
00:20They used to be, you know, super thick,
00:22and kids, you know, kids tease.
00:24So that was one of the things I got teased for,
00:26just being like super hairy
00:28and just all types of things, right?
00:30As you can see from my baby pictures,
00:32I have like a unibrow.
00:35When people were making fun of me,
00:36they were making fun of the unibrow.
00:41First time I heard about brow lamination,
00:42I thought of my second grade teacher
00:45laminating a piece of paper,
00:47and I was very confused.
00:50And then I looked it up, thank goodness for Google,
00:53and I learned that it's a substance
00:55that they put on your eyebrows to relax them,
00:57to really give them a shape that you're able to work with.
01:01It's exciting to see a procedure
01:02that's inclusive of my hair type,
01:04and then I can start the conversations
01:06about eyebrow hairs in the Black community.
01:08Me being the expert,
01:10I just want you to have the most beautiful brows.
01:14My name is Callie Smith,
01:16and I'm the owner of Fiction Cosmetic Tattooing
01:18in Echo Park, Los Angeles.
01:20Brow lamination is breaking down the bond of the hair,
01:25and making it pliable so you can move it into what direction
01:29works best for your aesthetic.
01:31It only lasts about eight to 12 weeks.
01:34When I first heard about brow lamination,
01:37I was like, what is brow lamination?
01:39It's kind of got a crazy name.
01:41I've heard it be called many things, brow lift, brow gelling,
01:46brow flip.
01:48I am not going to do anything that causes harm to your eyebrows
01:53or to your eyebrow hair or to your surrounding skin.
02:00People would be surprised.
02:01Just because you have thick eyebrows doesn't mean that
02:03they are necessarily any easier to take care of,
02:06that your maintenance is just, you know,
02:07oh, I'm just running out the door
02:08because my eyebrows always look good.
02:10I'm hoping that this procedure will cut down
02:11on that amount of work that I'll need to do.
02:13I hope the expert informs me ahead of time about the steps
02:17of the procedure, about what's going to happen.
02:19In my journey of tweezing my eyebrows on my own,
02:23I've really given them a shape that may not be natural to them.
02:28I hope that she's able to take, you know,
02:30what I've been tweezing over the past couple of years
02:32and make it into something beautiful.
02:59We're going to start with the first step,
03:02which is applying a skin barrier.
03:06So it protects the skin from getting any sort of irritation.
03:14I am going to apply the next step.
03:26The next step is what actually breaks down the bond of the hair,
03:31so it becomes more pliable.
03:39I'll let that process for about four minutes,
03:43and then I will remove the saran to check on her brow hair.
04:10If it seems like the brow hair is not quite pushed down to the skin,
04:16I'm going to want to process it for a little bit longer.
04:31After she processes for one to two more minutes,
04:35I remove that brow product and we apply the next step.
04:43The next step is what is going to lock that brow hair into place.
04:53I apply that and I let it sit for the same amount of time as the last step.
04:59So it's going to process for six minutes.
05:27I will apply conditions treatment to the other.
05:39eyebrows since we did just do a little bit of a chemical treatment on the
05:44eyebrows we want to make sure that that hair is getting nourished I will then
05:50ask Mikayla to keep the brow conditioning treatment on for 24 hours
06:02Wow they look completely different oh my gosh I love it after I was done with the
06:10treatment my initial reaction was whoa my eyebrows look very different I did not
06:16know how strong it was going to be whether or not it was gonna work on my
06:19eyebrows my hair type etc but it definitely worked so with Mikayla she
06:25definitely had a little bit more of course curly hair we had some that were
06:31going this way and some that were going that way and as she described she wanted
06:35them to all be up and fluffy we all want that big brow and it's really cool to
06:41see people being able just to love themselves for what they have doing
06:46these procedures to get that big fluffy editorial brow that you know maybe
06:52somebody was once bullied for I felt that out of the three procedures that I know
06:56about eyebrows this being one of them this was definitely my favorite I thought it
07:00was super inclusive to my eyebrow hair type she didn't have to leave the room to
07:04get a thicker string and try and you know thread it correctly and I've never
07:08tried waxing but I know that it hurts I already know that with the aftercare it's
07:14very simple as soon as you leave you can continue on with your day we do ask
07:20that you keep that brow conditioning treatment on for 24 hours and we also
07:26recommend that you don't get your eyebrows wet for 24 hours you just kind of
07:31brush down the tips a little bit shape them to your liking and they're still like
07:38fluffy fresh things like that but now it's not as you can kind of see the
07:42difference between the two brows now it's not as like I could cut my eyebrows if I
07:48want I can shape them I can see their actual length more I can like fill them
07:52in if I want I have so many options
