Literally translated from Spanish, buenas cejas means “good eyebrows.” So why call my blog this? Well, for one thing, my brows have been passed down to me from my grandfather, so now I feel it is up to me to carry the torch. Both he and I are particularly proud and protective of our eyebrows, although he doesn't put them through the rigorous maintenance I submit mine to.
But I also learned through a bit of wiki searching, “brow” means more than initially meets the eye. Culture has been subdivided into three “brows”: high, middle, and low. At first I naively thought that calling myself a “middlebrow” would be the most appropriate, assuming that it represented someone often frequented with indecision and/or who was content to sway to both ends of the spectrum (i.e. me). As it turns out, being a middlebrow is not such a good thing. In fact middlebrows were denounced by the highly opinionated Virginia Woolf, who, (and mind you, this is all according to Wikipedia), criticized them for proclaiming a disingenuous love of great literature, art, and music. The reality though, is that middlebrows never actually draw meaning from any of the works they claim to admire; they merely want to insidiously blend into society as intellectuals, or highbrows. I could have settled on highbrow, but let’s face it. Those people are a bit out of my league. And lowbrow? Well, I don't think I belong there.
Determined to not be a middlebrow, I labeled my own brows. They’re good brows, taking on a defiant, yet comfortable position. For me, this is a good place to be. They require a lot of work to maintain, but in the end I hope they leave their mark.
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