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Pai finished this round of treatments in April 2016.
Courtesy of Deanna Pai
But she’d lost all her body hairincluding her eyelashes and hereyebrowsin the process.
“I lost my eyebrowswhich just hadn’t occurred to me,” Pai tells SELF.
Pai, a beauty editor, first realized her eyebrows were gone on a press trip in Hawaii.
Up until then, she’d been using the same tinted eyebrow gel she’d loved before the chemo.
But with nothing to cling to, the gel would simply rub off her face.
“It looked OK for about five minutes,” she says.
“But I was meeting people and introducing myself with no eyebrows.”
For Pai, losing her brows was almost harder than losing the hair on her head.
“They’re so important on the face,” she says.
Then in Aprilby the time Pai’s treatment had wrapped upbeauty retailer Volition approached her with an idea.
Needless to say, Pai was on board.
“I would have felt so much more confident and comfortable had I had eyebrows,” she says.
“There are some fake brows out there that look so bad,” Pai says.
“Brows can go wrong so quickly.
And it was really important that they look as natural as possible.”
The last thing Pai and Volition wanted was to create a product that didn’t fully serve their audience.
“I also wanted a convenience factor,” Pai says.
“During chemo, I didn’t have enough energy to stand up in the shower.
Volition took her suggestions to heart and created a stunning prototype.
The company used human hair and lace mesh to make the faux eyebrows.
“And they didn’t feel very secure.”
She suggested using lash glue instead, which turned out the be the “perfect solution.”
“Residue build-up would give them an expiration date, which I thought would suck,” Pai says.
And Pai made sure to add one finishing touch: customization.
“It’s really easy to find something that looks like you grew it yourself,” she says.
Right now, the faux eyebrows are only a prototype.
If they are, anyone who preordered the brows through the Volition site can score them for $44.10.
Other interested buyers can purchase them for the retail price of $49.
She participated in their Cancer to 5K program just two weeks after finishing chemotherapy.
“It was through the Ulman Cancer Fund that I startedrunning,” Pai says.
“I feel really strongly about it, because it helped me heal physically and mentally after chemo.”
“You don’t have to pay,” she says.
“You just have to put in your email to show your support.”
Interested in voting for Pai’s product?
Check it outon the Volition sitehere.
And read apersonal essay Pai wroteabout her experience making the brows here.
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Also:What It Felt Like To Lose My Hair From Alopecia (BuzzFeed)
