High five, BROw: Men take on the peel-off brow tint trend - do they like it?

Any self-respecting beauty girl knows that one of the core tenets of millennial beauty is this: kilay is life. Full, perfectly-groomed Insta-ready (though not necessarily Instagram) eyebrows are "in", leading to any number of products catering to them, from liquid brow liners to peel-off “tattoo” tints. But while women have embraced rocking the power brow, one had to wonder... how might guys feel about trying the trend?

With men becoming more and more open to grooming (we even got one to try brow threading!), I thought it would be easy to find guys game to try tattoo tint brows. Bummer but I couldn't find any men open-minded enough to take the peel-off plunge! Thankfully, PV managing editor Den came to the rescue, and soon my personal favorite Maybelline Tattoo Brow Gel Tint was being applied on two willing volunteers. Here are their thoughts on taking on the peel-off tattoo brow trend:

Paul's natural brows

Paul wearing the tint

With his girlfriend's blessing, we first applied the tint on Paul, a student at the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health. As a member of VOX, the medical school's choral group, Paul says he's used to wearing makeup for performances. His familiarity with makeup is mostly on foundation and contouring but he occasionally dons full, “costume” makeup for more dramatic performances. However, he’d never tried brow products before, mostly because neither he nor the makeup artists who’d worked on him had seen the need.

Paul’s eyebrows are naturally full with a defined shape, if a bit patchy near the ends, making him an ideal candidate for the peel-off tint since there was more-or-less an outline to follow. Considering the overall thickness of his hair, we used the shade Dark Brown on him.

Paul's tinted brows

We left the tint on for about an hour to allow it to cure. After peeling, Paul’s brows were noticeably darker and fuller. The sparse patches in his already-thick brows were filled in, and though the difference was subtle, it was enough to impress him with the improvement. When asked how he felt about trying peel-off brows, Paul says, "Fun siya, in the sense na feeling parang dare. Pero kung feeling ko ba parang nawala ang pagkalalaki ko? No.” While he liked how they looked, he admits that he wouldn't do it again as he felt he didn’t really need it. He later reported that only one person noticed the change in his brows but didn't comment on whether they looked strange or better.

Javie's natural brows

Javie wearing the tint

Because his wife said so, our second volunteer was Javie, Den's husband and a senior editor at a digital company. Like Paul, he’d used makeup before, wearing foundation and concealer for special events, and having used concealer regularly at one point to hide blemishes. Beyond that, though, he hadn’t tried any other makeup products.

Javie’s eyebrows had a less-defined shape, and were denser towards the inner corners, tapering off at the ends. Since his brows were not as bushy as Paul's and were difficult to define, we used the Medium Brown shade for him instead, tracing the general shape of the hair growth.

After setting for an hour, Javie's newly-tinted brows were revealed. The overall effect was, in his words, ”distinguished.” The Medium Brown shade might not have filled in the brows as completely as the Dark Brown might have, but it provided a nice, diffused “natural” look that Javie admitted he found quite “cool.” Of the two volunteers, he was most open to trying peel-off tints again, though he had some reservations regarding the (admittedly) strong smell of the Maybelline peel-off tint. He also admitted that the application would take some getting used to but generally seemed game to try a tint with a milder odor (your recommendations are welcome!).

Overall, both of our male volunteers were happy with their peel-off brow results, finding themselves pleasantly surprised by how much of an impact a simple filling-in of the brows could add to the face.

Perhaps kilay can be life for guys, too? What do you think? Would you recommend peel-off brow tints to the bro in your life?