True Life: The Obsession With Eyebrows

What’s the first thing you see when you look at another person? Is it their hair? Their eyes? Maybe even their teeth? Well for me it is not any of those. When I first look at someone, all I can look at from the minute I meet them to the minute we part ways are their eyebrows. You see, eyebrows aren’t just something the body needs to prevent debris getting in our eyes or something to anchor your face. Eyebrows are one of the most important features about a person, you can learn so much about a person from their eyebrows before they even tell you their name. But to fully understand why eyebrows are so important today, we need to learn about their dark and rocky history.

We start our journey back in 3500 B.C. It was the time where Egyptians ruled the world as pharaohs and were just starting to build the Great Pyramids. With grand architecture comes grand brows and Cleopatra ruled the eyebrow game. With the heavy eyeliner came even heavier and bushy brows and the only grooming you were doing to your brows was adding more color and thickness.

Moving forward in time we arrive to the time of the Greeks, around 700 B.C. Purity and natural beauty was valued so there was no touching of the brows at all, unless you added a little powder to make them stand out. Unibrows were actually considered beautiful, so there was no plucking allowed.

Moving on to the Romans during about 400 B.C. we see they held almost the same standards as the Greeks before them did. Brows were to remain free and wild and were even considered a sign of intelligence.

It is with a heavy heart that we have to move on to the Middle Ages, around 1000 A.D. A trait much desired for at the time was a domed forehead and sadly an over plucked brow was a way to point attention to that. Women plucked their hearts away for a barely there look and made their arch pencil thin. Women would even add a red hint to their brows to give a nod to Queen Elizabeth.

Sadly, things did not get better for the eyebrow game in the 1920’s. The Roaring 20’s kept the same pencil thin look as the Medieval times did, but luckily with the emerging beauty product scene came darker, filled in brows.

We can now see the light at the end of the tunnel as we get to the 1940’s. Women want to soften their face so a more full and natural brow help that. Stars like Grace Kelly ushered in the change for a fuller brow and arch so many women followed them and we can never be more grateful for this change.

From the 1940s all the way through the 1960s we see brows getting more and more luscious and they didn't stop in the 70s. With the new hippie movement came the urge to let go of everything, including plucking and shaping your brows. Women let their brows run as free as they did and the beauty scene was all about going au naturale.

The great brows kept on coming in the 80s with the motto being “the bushier the better.” Just like their hair, women kept their brows crazy and wild. It didn’t matter the shape as long as you had as much hair as possible.

The eyebrow liberation sadly took a turn for the worse in the 90s as women started putting the tweezer back to their foreheads. Overplucking became the norm again and pencil-thin brows were the rage for celebs and everyday women alike. This sad and appalling trend continued into the new millennium as well.

Have no fear as the 2010’s are here! The agony is finally over as fuller eyebrows are in! A beautiful and natural yet defined brow are back and hopefully to stay. All we can do is hope brows stay like this and don’t take another turn for the worse.