The way your eyebrows are shaped can totally transform your face. But all too often we make the mistake of neglecting them.
You only have to look at old pictures of Liz Hurley to see how reshaped brows can lift the face.

Liz soon tamed her bushy brows
Click to enlarge

There's no rule that says thin is better than thick when it comes to brows. It's more important to choose a shape that suits your face and features.
It's very difficult to shape your own eyebrows. Get them done by a professional once or twice or year, and you'll have a good basic shape that you can maintain at home.
Before you reach for the tweezers, run through our indispensible guide to the do's and don't's...
Always use a good mirror, one that's too magnified can give you a distorted impression of your eyes with disastrous results.
Although no-one's brows are completely symmetrical, it's good to use a mirror that's big enough for you to see both eyes at once, so that you achieve an even result.
Never pluck more than one hair at a time. It's much easier to achieve a neat and tidy result if you tackle your brows hair by hair and you're less likely to end up with bald patches.
Invest in a good pair of tweezers like Tweezerman tweezers (prices start £15 - stockists and mail order: 020 7394 8800) or MAC's own (£19).

Tweezerman point tweezer, £15
Always
determine your eye shape before you start. If you have small eyes, brows will look best narrow, while larger eyelids can cope with a much bushier look.
Never pluck in the opposite direction to the way the hair naturally grows. It's a good idea to pluck eyebrows after a bath or shower when the hair will slip out more easily.
Always pluck with self-restraint! But don't be afraid to pluck the few stray hairs above your eyes. Although many professionals don't advocate it, it's fine as long as you're very careful not to over-pluck. This also applies to the area between the eyes - don't go mad.
Never attempt to create an artificial shape. Follow the natural shape of your brow, removing only stray hairs.
As a guide, align the brow's starting point with the inside corner of the eye and taper it out towards the temple.
If you're the type to get tweezer-happy, try lightly outlining the shape you want with an eye pencil, to ensure you don't overdo things.
Always use a soothing facial toner after plucking to help reduce any stinging and swelling.
Never use anything containing perfume or alcohol and dab gently, don't rub. Ice cubes and baby teething gels also work wonders as pain relievers.
Never use sharpened pencils on your newly groomed brows. Apart from the fact that it will probably hurt, you'll get an unnatural-looking end result.
Blunt your favourite pencil on the back of your hand before applying or stick to using only the flat edge.

Is the new trend to remove eyebrows a profound social statement - or just another daft fad from Planet Fashion?

Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima is best known for parading her curves alongside the likes of Heidi Klum in the Victoria's Secret lingerie catalogue.
Her bronzed skin, voluptuous physique and sensual pout have earned her a reputation as one of the sexiest women alive, and last year earned her around £4.5 million, with Forbes magazine ranking her as the world's fourth-highest paid model.
So why would someone blessed with such feminine, sultry beauty, in the prime of womanhood (she is expecting her first child in December) want to bleach her eyebrows, transforming her from sex kitten to androgynous mannequin with one swoop of the peroxide brush?
 
Androgynous: Adriana Lima in the 2009 Givenchy advertisement with bleached eyebrows
The model is starring in the autumn advertising campaign for Parisian fashion house Givenchy, with her brows bleached to oblivion.
But what's interesting is that she is not alone: this small but significant statement is rapidly becoming a trend in high fashion circles.
Her co-stars in the Givenchy campaign have all had their brows bleached or even removed, creating a startling uniformity amid male and female faces.
At the Balenciaga and Prada autumn catwalk shows, the models had their eyebrows taken off so they looked like a parade of alien-like figures - more sci-fi movie heroines than aspirational fashion figures.
Dutch model Lara Stone is another who leads the way with this trend: with her gap-teeth and bleached brows, the 25-year-old was the must-have model during the last round of designer collections, securing slots with Chanel, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Givenchy.

Startling uniformity: Another Givenchy advert from the campaign with four models sporting the bleached look
British model Kristen McMenamy appears on the cover of Italian Vogue's August issue sans eyebrows, and anecdotally it seems many young women are now ridding themselves of the small lines of hair that frame their eyes.
The look that was once sported by both Mona Lisa and Elizabeth I is now being sold as the last word in modernity.
The thinking seems to be that if you've exhausted every other manner of facial alteration in the book, why not try losing your eyebrows?
After all, we've inflated our lips, pierced our noses, smoothed our foreheads with Botox, chiselled our cheekbones and tattooed our eyelids with liner.

Indeed, in the midst of a recession, waxing your brows can shake up your look for the price of a pack of peroxide or pair of tweezers.
It's a severe style that does little to flatter most female faces, instead creating an otherworldly lack of expression, and an air of sexless roboticism to a woman's appearance.
Of course, in these harsh economic times, it's certainly a way of making a dramatic style statement without splashing out on an avant-garde designer outfit.
When times are tough, fashion frequently turns to more non-conformist looks in an attempt to plug into the edgy, unnerving tenor of the times. (There is a reason that the punk look took off in the Seventies, amid the strikes and doom and gloom of the decade.)
Some of those who have already followed this trend have suggested it is, one described it, 'an optimistic, idealistic statement' which is somehow unifying because it renders men and women more asexual.

One American woman, who seems to take it all very seriously, told the New York Times: 'Removing eyebrows removes a degree of expression, which makes one look less human and more anrebral, maybe even mechanical. It's exercise in modernity.'
Sarah Brown, the beauty director of American Vogue, says: 'People are saying: "How can I shake things up? I may not be able to buy myself a new handbag every three months, but what can I do to feel fresh and current and in style?"
Presumably that's why the August issue of Vogue features an otherworldly Steven Klein shot of a model epilated above the eyes.
'Everything is possible. This is a great way to look at the moment,' says Brown.
'However, I don't know how great it would look in the office or at your parents' house for dinner. It may be better just to lighten your brows by bleaching them a little bit.'
But while such an aggressive, unconventional look may appeal to some young women, the experts suggest that shaving our brows is not the way forward.
'The brow is the face's forgotten feature,' says Alberto Esteban, senior make-up artist at the leading cosmetics firm Bobbi Brown.
'It helps to balance the face and frame the eyes: if your brows are wrong, it's like having a beautiful painting without a frame, or worse, in an ugly frame - it will completely detract from your natural beauty.
'Eyes look lost and lifeless without eyebrows,' continues Vaishaly Patel, who shapes the brows of many high profile celebrities at her London clinic.
'Your brows are crucial to the character of your face: I know instinctively what shape will suit each woman, but everyone needs brows to bring out the personality in her face.'
That's why, however chic this latest trend might appear to some women, the truth is that if supermodels end up looking like androgynous freaks without their eyebrows, what hope is there for the rest of us?

HERE'S WHY WE NEED THEM...

Models with shaved eyebrows are deprived of two vital things: a guarantee they’ll be able to see properly and a key form of sex appeal, according to medical science.
We evolved eyebrows primarily to make sure our eyes are clear and comfortable — by keeping out dirt, sweat and rain — but they developed into a device for signalling emotions, sincerity and even our worth as potential mates.
Daniel McNeill, a science writer and the author of The Face: A Natural History, says eyebrows evolved to convey body language in early pre-linguistic man — in other words, they are used to tell people what’s on our minds.
He adds: ‘The tell-tale sign of fear or worry involves the rise and pulling together of the eyebrows. They rise in surprise and descend in anger.’
Eyebrows can also reveal if your emotions are genuine. The 19th-century French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne determined that the physical difference between a true smile of joy and a smile that was simply social lies in the eyes — particularly in the contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscles, which pull the eyebrows slightly down.
Most importantly for women, though, eyebrows are a key to their sex appeal.
In one study at Louisville University, male students were asked to describe the ideal components in a woman’s face. The results showed that, among other significant characteristics of sexiness, the ideal woman has high eyebrows.
Dr Ben Jones, who runs the Face Laboratory at Aberdeen University, agrees, saying: ‘Men from all cultures and all backgrounds are drawn to arched eyebrows which, like a fresh complexion, seems to be a physical result of a woman having high oestrogen levels — and oestrogen is an indicator of health and fertility.’

WHAT THE STARS LOOK LIKE WITHOUT THEIRS...

Sans eyebrows: Victoria Beckham, Angelina Jolie and Catherine Zeta-Jones



Bye, bye brows: Cheryl Cole, Sienna Miller and Kylie Minogue



Alien-like look: Keira Knightley, Madonna and Kate Moss



And how men look if they follow the trend: Gordon Brown, Simon Cowell and Daniel Radcliffe