What The Pluck: The Expressionism of Eyebrows
What The Pluck: The Expressionism of Eyebrows
Written by heather thorn
photographed by Emilie Dumas
Raised, furrowed, arched, lowered, drawn up: beyond protecting the eyes from dirt, sweat, and rain, eyebrows are one of the most telling facial features of emotion. Serving as a system of communication, eyebrows have their own language. Raise one eyebrow, and it’s clear you’re skeptical or playful. Raise two, and all of a sudden you’re surprised. Lower both and emanate anger or confusion. Draw up the inner corners and you’ll depict sadness. In addition to being a useful way of reading someone’s emotions, eyebrows have long become a source of self-declaration regarding fashion and statement-making.
Not all eyebrows are created equal. According to my mom, I was born with prominent eyebrows, and used them to my advantage as a baby. She recalls me raising my eyebrows and being very expressive in my first moments of life. Later, I would grow into my brows. At the age of ten, I began experimenting with different makeup and filling them in. During these experiments of self-expression, I made sure to shy away from tweezers. They made me nervous: how could such a small contraption make such a big difference? Barely one-third the size of my palm, tweezers intimidated me to the extent that I swore them off at a young age.
Only a few years later did I venture out into the world of plucking. Why the delay? I was in no rush to adhere to the tamed style I’d seen in fashion magazines, the thinly manicured brows of models like Bella Hadid. My mom had warned me from an early age that there’s a thin line to cross when it comes to eyebrows. It’s very easy to go from manicured to measly with one swift tweeze.
My mom didn’t want my eyebrows to irreversibly grow thin such as hers. Like many women who followed the razor-thin eyebrow trend that Drew Barrymore led in the 1990s, my mom was left with permanently sparse eyebrows. Curved in the shape of two half moons due to the damage of her hair follicles, the result of over-plucking.
Her tale served as both a warning and a lesson that I have taken into account ever since. It was only a few years later in middle school that I first thought of manicuring my eyebrows. I set out to convince my mom to let me get my eyebrows done. Begging, more begging, and some more begging before she finally brought me to a professional waxer. Though my mom’s lesson is one that has stayed in the back of my mind, that isn’t to say I haven’t experimented. I’ve slit my eyebrows, gone thinner, and gone blockier (thanks, Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade!). At the end of the day, these trials and errors have led me to appreciate my natural eyebrow shape even more. Being able to “try on” different eyebrows with the help of makeup, tweezers, and eyebrow razors has allowed me to test which styles I like most.
At the end of the day, eyebrows are a fashion statement more than anything else. Apart from the thin brow trends written all over the ’90s, and the bushier look made famous by Cara Delevigne in 2016, eyebrows have even become an art form.
Eyebrow piercings exploded in popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s and have made a comeback within the past two years, in part because of Jacob Elordi’s character in the movie Saltburn, released in November of 2023. Bleached brows, originally a trend in the high fashion scene in the ’90s, has also revived in the past few years with the help of fashion-forward celebrities such as Julia Fox and Kendall Jenner.
The circling trends of thinning, piercing, filling, and bleaching eyebrows have seen different prioritizations of the styling of eyebrows that can often seem impossible to keep up with. As a fashion statement in their own right, it’s important to remember that now more than ever we have the freedom to choose how to wear our eyebrows. So, wear them proudly! Or don’t wear them. But you should show them off: they’re yours to decide what to do with. And I promise not to raise my eyebrow at you if you tweeze yours a little too much.