Slant tweezers

Slant tweezers are two strips of steel joined at one end, their tips cut at the same angle so that they close into a single slanted edge. The long side of the slant grips a hair along its length, which is what catches a short or stubborn one; the point picks out a single stray. That combination is what makes the slant the usual shape for brows, and the same tool sets false lashes and lifts cluster lashes into place.

Other tips do other jobs. Pointed tweezers, fine as needles, are made for splinters and very fine hairs; flat or rounded tips grip a broad area but are less precise; a pointed slant combines slant and point. Tweezing takes hairs out one at a time, from the root. Threading and waxing clear many at once, and a brow razor cuts hair at the surface rather than pulling it.

Hold a pair up to the light and close it. The two tips should meet along the whole slanted edge with no gap; tips that cross, or that leave a sliver of light between them, will slip on a short hair however hard you squeeze. The tension should be firm enough to close without effort and to spring open at once. Makers that hand-file or etch their tips say so, and angles differ: one Swiss-designed pair is sold at 25 degrees, and a wider slant is sold for thick brows.

Size and grip suit the hand. Full-length tweezers give more control; minis travel. Stainless steel is the norm, and it can be wiped with alcohol; painted and coated handles look cheerful but can chip. A cap, sleeve or case matters more than it seems, because tips knocked about in a bag go out of alignment, and a pair whose tips no longer meet is worth replacing.

Work in good light, on clean skin: cream and oil make hairs slippery, and one maker tells its buyers always to use its tweezers on clean skin, without lotion, oil or makeup. Decide the shape before you start, with a pencil if it helps, and take out only the hairs outside it. Hold the skin taut with one finger, grip each hair as close to the root as you can with the slanted edge, and pull it out quickly in the direction it grows. Work on both brows in turn and step back from the mirror often; a hair taken out cannot be put back.

Plucking has a cost. The NHS lists it, with waxing and threading, among the causes of ingrown hairs, and advises against scratching, picking or squeezing an ingrown hair, since that can damage the skin and lead to infection.^[1] Near the eye, the same tweezers set false lashes and lift away dried glue; the FDA asks that any instrument placed in the eye area be clean, and warns against scratching the eye or the skin around it.^[2]

Makers’ instructions agree on the basics. Sephora’s own-label pair is to have its tips cleaned with alcohol after each use and left to dry; a Swiss maker recommends a little rubbing alcohol on a clean cloth after each use, drying the tips thoroughly and keeping the cap on. Pick stray hairs and any dried lash glue off the tips before cleaning them, since glue left on the tips stops them meeting and makes the next lash stick to the tweezers rather than the lid. If a pair falls onto a hard floor, check the tips against the light before using it again. Keep brow tweezers for brows and lashes, with a separate pair for splinters, and do not share them.

Tweezers for removing hair are ancient. The Science Museum Group holds a bronze pair of depilatory tweezers, probably Graeco-Roman, dated between 500 BCE and 500 CE.^[3] A bronze pair from Korea’s Goryeo dynasty (918 – 1392), in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is made in one piece with an ear-scoop; the museum says tweezers were widely used by men and women in that period, and links them to a taste for a broad forehead and distinctive eyebrows, citing an account of 1123 by an envoy from Song China.^[4] In Japan, a woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada of about 1823, from a series on modern makeup, shows a woman plucking her brows with tweezers, framed as if in a hand mirror.^[5]

Between the wars, one American maker redesigned the tweezer around the brow. In 1934 the Kurlash Company of Rochester, New York, added a patented pair, the Twissors, whose scissor-like handles were bent so that the brows stayed in view; a professional version followed in 1940, and similar tweezers are still sold.^[6] The slanted tip itself has no reliable date of birth that we have found.

In the late twentieth century the tweezer became a business of its own. Dal LaMagna founded Tweezerman in 1980.^[7] By his own account he began by buying Swiss tweezers of the Dumont brand and selling them to lumberyards, for splinters, until a woman he knew told him they made splendid eyebrow pluckers and he turned to spas and beauty salons.^[8] By January 2005 the company had been sold to Zwilling J.A. Henckels, the Solingen maker of knives and scissors.^[7] A precision instrument for splinters had become a beauty tool by being sold as one.