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Comments about Michelle Obama's brows lead to some tweaking

By Wendy Donahue | Tribune reporter

January 19, 2009

Can you tell a difference? Michelle Obama on Aug. 25, 2008 (top) and Jan. 18, 2009 (bottom).

Top: In this Aug. 25, 2008 file photo, Michelle Obama speaks during the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Bottom: President-elect Barack Obama, left, and wife Michelle wave as they arrive at the "We Are One: Opening Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009. (AP photo/Charles Dharapak, AP photo / Jeff Christensen)

To bloggers who once posted warnings such as this, "To Michelle Obama: Your Eyebrows May Lose the Election," Obama might point out the following:

a) They didn't. Hah!

But ...

b) She got the message, just the same.

That message was this: The angularity of Obama's brows was lending a look of intensity that some pundits, such as Bill O'Reilly, construed as anger or severity on the campaign trail.

"I will take the compliment or the blame for it," said Chicago-based makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Myles from Washington on Thursday, where she was minutes away from preparing Obama's face for one of many appearances leading up to and including the inauguration. She also has done Obama's makeup for other occasions, including the Democratic National Convention and Election Night.

Grimes-Myles, who is lead artist on Chicago-based WGN-TV news' makeup team, met the Obamas about five years ago, when Barack Obama was doing an interview with newscaster Allison Payne, a friend of Grimes-Myles'.

"Allison called me and said, 'Can you come over and put a little powder on Barack Obama?' I said sure. I ran over. He didn't need or want powder. ... But I ended up, while the shoot was going on, talking to Michelle, and we became fast friends."

Grimes-Myles, who also has done the faces of Isabella Rossellini, Caroline Kennedy and Katie Couric, started grooming Obama's eyebrows, a specialty for which she had become known when she worked at the Marilyn Miglin Institute on the Gold Coast.

"In the very beginning when I was training Michelle's brows, I trained them to grow in an angular way," said Grimes-Myles. "My personal aesthetic is that I like a high arch."

Then in late summer, criticism about the cast of Obama's brows reached critical mass.

"When she started getting that feedback—I have a rule: When three or more people give you feedback, that means hundreds are talking about it—then what I began to do is bring them down and train them down," Grimes-Myles said.

She emphasizes there was no all-out panic.

"As an artist I was surprised. ... And then I took my ego out of it and decided, oh, OK, to most people that would seem a little high. And Michelle ... likes herself. She is a very secure woman. It wasn't like, 'Oh, my God, people are saying my eyebrows are too sharp and too high!' It was something that we moved through very calmly."

It's worth noting that big-screen beauty Nicole Kidman has caught similar flak. Ironically, Botox treatments, used to erase frown lines, can be a culprit. If you knock out the frown muscles in someone who has a particularly strong frontalis muscle across their forehead, "the only way to go is up," said Dr. Carolyn Jacob, director of Chicago Cosmetic Surgery and Dermatology, who performs Botox treatments "all day long."

"We call it the Jack Nicholson or the Spock look. Whatever it is, people don't like it. It won't happen in everybody. And you can correct it by putting a tiny bit of Botox above the arch so they won't be able to lift it so high."

Maybe Kidman has done so; her brows have appeared softer recently, including in her recent film " Australia."

As for Obama, Jacob doesn't know whether she has had any Botox injections.

And Grimes-Myles won't reveal many of her beauty secrets, even favorite products.

But, she let slip that for Obama's often-admired lip color, she wields a variety of M.A.C. lip pencils—one darker, one light—plus lipstick and gloss, which Grimes-Myles custom-mixes.

Also, she goes easy on the blush for Obama and all women of color, preferring to contour and shade the face. "For women of color, they don't really blush," Grimes-Myles said. "You should [add] blush where you naturally blush."

For the brows, she employs Tweezerman tweezers and a combination of brow powders and pencils.

Whatever the precise technique with Obama's brows, it seems to be working.

"If you look at some of Michelle's pictures today," Grimes-Myles said, "you'll see the difference and the growth."

In a word, change.

wdonahue@tribune.com