Last week, Glossier debuted a companion to their best-selling tinted brow gel, Boy Brow. Brow Flick is a liquid brow pen designed to allow you to draw on individual hairs with the precision of a microblader.
Boy Brow is pretty beloved, partly because it’s just so damn easy to use. Are we really all ready to move on from our best brow friend? How hard is it to draw these flicks, exactly? How well does it stay on — and how hard is it to get it off? The Cut put the new product to the test to answer all of these questions.
Here’s what five women who love Boy Brow think of the new addition.
Erica Smith, Beauty Writer
Sadly, Brow Flick is not the brow product for me. My brows mainly need shaping, with some filling at the front and extension of the brow at the back. Brow Flick will definitely make your brows look bigger and bushier, if that’s what you’re looking for. But it took so long to get there.
I’m used to drawing with a pencil which allows you to easily diffuse any harshness or mishaps by brushing through with a spoolie. With this, if you mess up, you’re kinda screwed, because it’s seriously budge-proof. I sweated considerably yesterday, on the subway and even on a roof, and this stuff did not move or fade. But that means you have to put it on perfectly the first time. I eventually got the hang of it (mostly) after several attempts spanning over a week, but it’s tricky to master the right amount of pressure and angle to get a hair-looking stroke. I just don’t have the patience, nor the skill, for this. Still down with using Boy Brow on the reg, though.
Madeleine Aggeler, Staff Writer
I have been a devotee of Glossier’s Boy Brow ever since it came out, but I was skeptical about the Brow Flick. In 2007, I played hot dad Sandy Cohen from the OC in a sketch at my summer camp by Sharpie-ing my eyebrows into huge black rectangles, and I was nervous the pen would create a similar effect. But the color goes on lightly, and the tip is thin and precise enough that it doesn’t feel like you’re smudging a marker across your forehead. Also around the same time I was playing Sandy, I was plucking the crap out of eyebrows to make them as skinny as possible, and while they have mostly recovered, there are still thinner patches of my eyebrows, especially toward the ends.
Brow Flick is able to fill in these spots better than Boy Brow alone, and gives my eyebrows a more uniform thickness, which I like. (Even though you can only see one of my eyebrows in this picture, just trust me that the other one also looks lush and full under my bangs.) I don’t feel like I need to do a full brow every day, but I’ll definitely use this when I go out.
Katie Heaney, Health and Science Writer
I’ve been a loyal Boy Brow wearer in Brown for at least a year and was somewhat skeptical about what, if anything, Brow Flick might add to the overall aesthetic. I tried it in Blond, which is actually more of a taupe, and it seemed a better fit than brown for a current redhead.
The effect is definitely minimal, but I do think it made my brows look more “piecey,” in a way? You could fake individual hairs with this more than you can with Boy Brow, for instance. That said, I’m not sure anyone else would notice, and I can’t see how this funny little felt tip won’t just dry out within a few weeks.
Amanda Arnold, Staff Writer
No matter how hung-over, how sleep-deprived, how down I may be, I won’t leave my apartment without tending to my eyebrows, which need help to look a little thicker, thanks to my unfortunate dedication to the thin eyebrows trend in the early aughts. Like Boy Brow, Brow Flick looks natural and is much more forgiving than I anticipated — the applicator has a soft tip and it goes on lightly and smoothly. The color isn’t too heavy, so it doesn’t look like you’ve markered on your brows.
I typically use a pencil to draw in my brows, although I’m not the best at keeping it sharp so it’s definitely not very precise. That being said, though, it definitely takes longer to apply than Boy Brow, which would probably stop me from buying the Flick in the future.
Kathleen Hou, Beauty Director
My brows have finally recovered from the Threading Attacks of the early 2000s. My main goal with them is to let them have peace – I tweeze very sparingly, and let a brow expert, Bob Scott, discipline them when need be. Every day, I use a light-brown brow pencil and gently shade the patchier areas closer to the tail. I then use a spoolie to blend, so I’m not looking for individual hair realness here.
This pencil is a little too much for me, an amateur brow artist. If you are very OCD with your brows and like painting on individual hairs like a tiny little eyebrow Picasso, this is great for you. I lack that patience and skill. None of my attempts resembled real hair, and I gave myself Shreeky-the-Care-Bear-villain brows all of the three times I tried this.
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