The Trouble with Targaryen Eyebrows
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| Obviously, not natural |
Look, Dany looks great in almost every episode and she's gorgeous and beautiful. However, we all know that she has weird eyebrows. I know it, you know it, and I'm pretty sure that the showrunners know it too. Now, I say that Daenerys has weird eyebrows because Emilia Clarke has rather lovely eyebrows. The only problem is that Emilia Clarke's eyebrows do not match Daenerys Targaryen's hair. I'm not sure if the makeup and hair people on Game of Thrones are aware of this or not, but eyebrow color tends to match hair color because eyebrows are -- *wait for it* -- hair! Therefore, If Daenerys has white hair, she should have white eyebrows. The fact that she doesn't have white eyebrows makes her look really weird and not in character. The combination of dark eyebrows and white hair just screams wig.
Now, obviously, part of the reason her hair screams wig is that it is a wig. I'm aware of the fact that there aren't wigs for eyebrows (but wouldn't it be fun if there were?), but there are other ways that the makeup and hair people could color correct her eyebrows. The most obvious solution is to dye her eyebrows. I can understand why that might be a problem for Emilia Clarke because, as I just got finished saying, it looks weird when eyebrows and hair don't match. And, if she bleached her eyebrows, they certainly would not match her natural hair. Personally, I think that, as an actor, you should be willing to make some small sacrifices for your character and temporarily dying your eyebrows seems pretty inconsequential (except for the fact that I'm writing an entire blog about why it is consequential). Plus, the showrunners don't allow Kit Harrington (Jon Snow) to cut his hair, so they should have no problem regulating Emilia Clarke's eyebrows. Seriously, The worst thing that could happen would be that Emilia Clarke would have funny looking eyebrows for a while and then she would dye them back to their normal color.
(I'm guessing that Emilia Clarke must have a better agent than Kit Harrington because there doesn't seem to be a hair clause in her contract.) All right, that's cool, Emilia Clarke doesn't have to dye her eyebrows. I'm sure there are plenty of hair chalks and cosmetics that could easily be utilized to lighten her eyebrows. Or, even better, they could just change the color of her eyebrows in post-production. I mean, if they can create CGI dragons and superimpose scars and scales on people's faces, they should be able to alter the color of Emilia Clarke's eyebrows. I understand that that would take a lot of extra effort, but it would be a small portion of the overall amount of money and time that they must spend on CGI.
However, I'm not convinced that they couldn't just use some sort of brow powder or makeup to change the color of her eyebrows. They don't even have to be white -- actually, I'd rather they weren't white. A nice grayish/silvery color would be nice. I understand that sometimes characters can't look the way they're described in books and I'm okay with that. For example, in the book, Dany has purple eyes, which would be totally unrealistic for TV Dany. All I'm asking for here is a sense of visual continuity and an attempt at making her wig-like hair look natural without making her eyebrows look ridiculous -- which is a real concern. I know a couple of people with naturally light colored eyebrows and I've observed that when your eyebrows are too light it looks like you don't have eyebrows. If you look like you don't have eyebrows, you have a permanent expression of surprise. I don't know if that would be a good look for Dany -- it's not really the appearance of a confident leader.
Although, in all fairness, a lot of surprising things have happened to her -- like the dragons; who could have seen that coming?
Valar dohaeris
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