As soon as the Kardashian's hit television, a new body image idea developed.The idea that “curves" and “thickness" was attractive. Many people despise this family and many idolize them, but we should credit the fact that their physical image created a somewhat positive trend for society and empowered women to embrace their curves, even though Kim's are 99.9% unattainable. Thick hips, thick legs, thick butt, all thick everything. And even more recently became the “Thick Brow," something that was meant to appear as simple with little work, and yet so many girls put so much work only to create oily, fake looking caterpillars, which was NOT the idea.
It was 2012 when I first realized people could even control the color and shape of their eyebrows. I was at the mall getting my makeup done for Winterball, me and my girl friends were at Nordstrom sitting in the chairs and my best friend Ali was getting her eyebrows enhanced with a crayon like tool, we were all confused and had never seen anything like that before. As we left the mall Ali was skeptical about her new brow job and considered erasing them from the look, but she eventually decided they positively enhanced the look and added this trick to her daily beauty fix.
Below are some images of what happened when I googled eyebrows from every year from 2010 to 2014:
This above image is from the Spring/Summer 2010 Fashion Week featuring models from the designer “Chloe" Show. While other designers chose for their models to have little to no eyebrows, makeup artists at the Chloe show concentrated on bold, natural eyebrows.
Upon googling “2011 Eyebrows," the first image that appeared was actress Lily Collins at the MTV Movie Awards. Lily was one of the first actresses to sport thick, natural eyebrows on television. Her target audience was mostly and teens and young adults being that she was featured on MTV and a few shows on the E! Network. Her eyebrows are signature to her physical appearance and is acclaimed for them.
Starting to see a pattern here? The poster-child for 2012 eyebrows was this model from the J Mendel Fashion Show during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Compared to the two previous images, this model's brows are thicker, darker, and a little less tamed.
Come 2013 & 2014 over 50% of the google images that came up were of English supermodel Cara Delevingne. Her perfect face includes a glowing complexion, beautiful shaped lips, button nose, murky blue eyes, and dark symmetrical brows which finish off the look. British Vogue describes the 22-year-old as the “Star Face" of the 2013 Fall/Winter Fashion Week, starring in campaigns for H&M, Blumarine, DKNY, Tom Ford, Yves Saint Laurent, Zara, and Chanel. Teens everywhere are changing their brows to resemble this young beauty.
Of all the beautiful women pictured above, it isn't a surprise that young women nowadays are aiming for this look. However, like we were taught when we first learned about applying makeup, less is more. With that in mind, to achieve looks like this, one must keep it simple. Start with your own natural brow and simply shape the brows to first appear symmetrical in size, you can simply tweeze to just clean up but don't pluck until there is nothing left. Also when it comes to products, refrain from anything using gel or wax. Those materials make the brows look waxy and oily and look almost painted on which is not what you want to go for. Use a more powder or kohl based palette or pencil; these usually don't contrast too much in color from the original brow color. Another thing to keep in mind is that elongated brows frame the face much better than eyebrows that are too short; see below for some helpful products.
Anastasia Beverly Hills - Bold Brow Kit $36.00
Clinique Brow Shaper - $16.00
Clinique Brow Keeper - $16.00
Laura Mercier Brow Powder Due - $24.00
