Eyebrow pencilling is something that came quite late to me. Mine are naturally dark so it’s not something I ever felt would make all that much difference. This changed when I worked briefly on a Benefit cosmetics counter as a BA and was told bluntly by the beauty manager that my naked brows simply wouldn’t do and that I’d better get on it, stat.

As you’d expect, counters tend to be quite strict with the products their BAs wear to work. I had this brought home to me when I wore a combination of Urban Decay’s Money (shimmering blue-green) and Radium (cobalt blue) eyeshadows and a customer asked me if I could do the same make-up on her. I was INCREDIBLY flattered but unfortunately I couldn’t recreate the look on her because every eyeshadow Benefit sells is a neutral. Awkward. The upshot is that I had two options for on-counter brow definition, Benefit Instant Brow Pencil or Brow Zings, which is a small box containing tinted brow wax, setting powder, miniature brushes and a teeny, tiny pair of Tweezerman tweezers. This latter option was always extremely popular, despite costing £23.50 and being, in my opinion, a right royal pain in the arse. I can be bothered to do a lot of ridiculous, time-consuming things with myself, but applying two separate products to my eyebrows with little brushes my gargantuan sausage fingers are ill-equipped for is not one of them.

Benefit Instant Brow Pencil in Medium, £14 from Debenhams

The effect of Instant Brow Pencil, however, is much more, er, instantaneous. Admittedly it has the same number of steps to it as Brow Zings (i.e. two), but it’s so much faster and easier to use and there are no small parts to lose (or pose a choking hazard if you have young children in the vicinity). You simply shade your brows in with it and then blend the wax a little using the comb (technical term: “spoolie”) at the other end of pencil. Boom.

The pencil comes in three shades and you will almost certainly be the middle one, ‘Medium to Dark’. This is because the ‘Deep’ shade is not black but a sort of charcoal grey – the only time I sold one of these in six months was to a girl looking for a grey eyeliner, not a brow pencil – and the ‘Light’ shade is only good for those with the very fairest of colouring. Unfortunately Benefit hasn’t yet cottoned on that 90% of their customers are going to need this medium shade and frequently run out online and at their counters. If you find one in stock somewhere and you like it, buy it!

Although Instant Brow Pencil is more or less beloved by all, the common complaint seems to be that it runs out too quickly. This is actually a case of user error rather than a serious shortcoming on the part of the product; the pencil is very soft, so if you use it with anything less than the lightest of touches you are going to end up a) getting through a whole pencil every month and b) walking around looking like Frida Kahlo, i.e. terrifyingly hairy. Next time you use it try delicate, feather-light strokes and build up the shading gradually. That way it’ll seem less outrageous that you spent £14 on a single eye pencil!

Naked eyebrow (excuse the shine; I’ve just oil cleansed!)

After applying Benefit Instant Brow Pencil