Barely presentable

The presentation skills course I was attending followed largely along the lines of the previous presentation skills courses¹ I’d attended – know your audience, keep it simple, practice – but the instructor also had a lot to say about confidence.

“Confident presentation is the key,” he said confidently, “the effectiveness of your presentation is 5% what’s on your slides, 5% what you say and 90% how you say it.” He continued, “Confidence comes with practice, but there are some things you can do to help boost your confidence. Make sure you dress right, comb your hair, maybe” – at this point he made very pointed eye contact with me – “pluck your eyebrows. Anything you can do to give yourself that little confidence boost.”

That night, I looked critically at my eyebrows in the mirror. I had not previously given my eyebrows a great deal of thought beyond wondering vaguely what they were for². Looking at them closely now, I could see there were some adjustments to be made. They were different sizes and shapes and contributed to the general asymmetry of my face. I’d read in New Scientist that symmetrical faces were more attractive, so I had something to aim for. For a start, the right eyebrow stuck out further on one side.

I clicked on my electric shaver and sheared off the far edge of my right eyebrow. Although effective at removing hair, the shaver wasn’t the most precise of instruments and I could see right away that I’d taken off a bit too much. Also, it now ended in a straight line and an eyebrow with right angles didn’t seem right either. I reactivated the shaver and tried to taper it neatly. In retrospect I chose the wrong side, approaching the eyebrow from below and sweeping the shaver upwards so that the eyebrow ended in a point. I considered my efforts in the mirror. Not bad, I thought, but now the left eyebrow was the longer one. I felt like I was getting the hang of it, so I felt no trepidation as I lined up the next cut.

I put down the shaver and stepped back to appraise my work.  By tapering both eyebrows from below, I could see that I’d given myself a permanent look of malevolent surprise of the exaggerated kind used to signal to those even in the cheapest opera seats that a particular soprano has bad intentions. I flexed my eyebrows in the mirror, waggling them up and down. While I wasn’t entirely happy with the result, I felt like it could be fixed. A more incremental approach might be in order though, so I grabbed a pair of tweezers. It seemed like both eyebrows impinged too far upon my nose and to different degrees, so I started plucking. I soon discovered that under the intense scrutiny that I was now giving my eyebrows, the loss of even a single hair had major implications. One hair at a time, and with great concentration, I cleared a significant space at the top of my nose.

I took a moment to appreciate the overall effect. I saw that the eyebrows, now shortened from both ends, seemed taller than they ought to be.

Memory is a funny thing. There are whole years of my life that barely left a trace, significant moments that I can only recall recalling or assemble from photographic evidence and anecdotes. And yet, I can remember in precise detail my thought process as I started to thin my left eyebrow. I remember thinking that if I thinned from the bottom again, I would accentuate the surprised look that I had already committed myself to and that would be a mistake. I didn’t give any real thought to the consequences of starting from the top: I just got on with it.

My eyebrows are darker lower down and fairer higher up. Removing the finer, fairer hairs really bought out the upper edge of my eye socket, which had till now been softened by the gradient from light to dark. It gave my left eye a very intense look that reminded the onlooker that underneath one’s face, indeed, not very far beneath one’s face is a skull. I realised, belatedly, that I had gone perhaps a little too far. I covered the left side of my face with my hand and looked at my right eyebrow. In comparison, it looked almost normal. A little surprised, sure. A tiny bit malevolent and maybe a smidge taller than people were used to, but nothing that wasn’t socially acceptable.

I stood there looking at it for a very long time. I knew what I had to do to it, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I remembered the story of a Hollywood starlet who had been pressured into shaving off her eyebrows entirely for some role she was playing. They’d never grown back and she’d had to have them tattooed on. With a heavy heart, I started plucking.

Needless to say, the next day – and for weeks thereafter – I did not feel confident at all³. Even now that my eyebrows have grown back – and indeed with my advancing years, become almost magnificent – I’m still not particularly confident and the thought of speaking even a few words in public continues to fill me with anxiety. I thought it would go away eventually, but it never really has. Even the thought of introducing myself to a roomful of people makes my hands shake. Instead, what happened was that I got used to giving presentations while desperately anxious.

-fin-

1. Successive waves of tutors, supervisors and managers have figured that my presentational problems might be solved by a three day course. ↩︎
2. Scientific opinion is divided, but there seem to be two main purposes. They to stop sweat and other things dripping into our eyes. They’re also useful for communication and expressing our emotions. ↩︎
3. Or particularly attractive for that matter. ↩︎