If you haven’t heard, thin eyebrows are coming back
Once upon a time, I used a razor to style my eyebrows.
It was a weekly ritual until one day I woke up and I realized that the way I held the razor caused half of my eyelashes to be cut off.
I was trying to achieve the perfect, clean, slim, eyebrow. I couldn’t stand the little hairs that grew under, above, or next to my eyebrow. I wasn’t even really into the beauty trends of the time, but I grew up around girls plucking their eyebrows to thin lines that accentuated their brow bone.
Eventually, I wreaked absolute havoc on my eyebrows and stopped plucking them all together. My hair was black and I used dark brown eyeliner to draw them on, and then my middle school math teacher told me I looked like Elvira. I’ve been afraid to touch them ever since.
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Ever since Cara Delevingne caused a storm in the beauty world, most girls I know try their best to grow them out and keep them thick like it’s the 80s again.
“Eyebrows are super important,” they say. That’s true, but that doesn’t mean you have to have Taylor Hill’s brows to make a statement. Recently, I’ve come across girls who are doing the complete opposite of this, and they’re rocking this 90s/early 2000s look.
Thin brows actually originate from the 1920’s flapper era when women wanted to their faces to appear more dramatic and expressive. An extreme arch and a long tail that curved downward was desirable until the 1940’s.
They were reintroduced to the mainstream in the 90’s, with stars like Drew Barrymore, Pamela Anderson, and Gwen Stefani rocking pencil thin brows to highlight unique features on their face. And of course, there are also subcultures — chola culture comes to mind — that rock thin brows no matter what’s considered on-trend in the mainstream.
We got the scoop from a few of our favorite Instagram baddies about their thin brow inspo.
For Los Angeles Native Aisling Cummins (@l.3.3.n), there hasn’t been one continuous beauty inspiration in her life, just a lot of little ones. “Lil Kim, Grace Jones, Courtney Love and Slick Rick all have really distinct looks and I’ve taken a lot of cues from them,” she said.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSNPtJ1Dn3z/?taken-by=l.3.3.n
Aisling has never had natural eyebrows, but she thinks they are really beautiful, along with unibrows.
“I always get shit for over plucking my eyebrows and it’s really annoying,” she said. “People are like, that’s gonna ruin your eyebrows, you should let them grow out. For me, I’m more interested in creating a distinct look than maintaining natural beauty.”
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The creepy-cool goth-esque @lilith_levisis has one beauty inspiration we all know very well, Harley Quinn. “She is always in white clown face with dark eyes, red lips, and exaggerated features, wearing smeared makeup like she just got fucked all the time,” Lilith says.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BS93mIZhbyz/?taken-by=lilith_levisis
Lilith thinks the natural look is nice, but she doesn’t think people should only praise natural beauty: “I feel like a lot of men shame girls who wear a lot of makeup, like guys always hate my eyebrows,” she says. “My look has gotten more natural over time, I used to to wear makeup down from my eyes to cheeks. Now I just do less because I feel like I look better with less.”
For the doe-eyed Catherine Richmond (@douxkitten), Angelina Jolie has always been one of her main inspirations.
“Any look they had her in for a film, she pulled off with her certain edge,” she said. “More recently, drag queens like Sasha Velour and Farrah Moan have been beauty inspirations for me.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BUpgWfsBvph/?taken-by=douxkitten
Sometimes it’s hard for girls to grow in super thick brows, and that’s totally okay. “I think the natural eyebrow trend is great, I really love most peoples natural eyebrows except for mine,” Catherine says. “I wish mine grew naturally thicker but my eyebrow hair is really light and wont grow in as much.”
Shoutout to these ladies for being beauty inspirations throughout the era of caterpillar brows. If you got an urge, pluck those eyebrows girl!
