We’re in the Age of Experimental Eyebrows

Every now and again, when makeup artist Isabel Rose is in the mood to, you know, feel something, she will run a mundane errand sporting a supremely odd set of eyebrows. Posting to an audience of over 573,000 on Instagram, the beauty enthusiast (@isabellrrose) has a robust online portfolio of pencil-thin arches, from sunken sorrowful slants to werewolf-inspired darts. Naturally, after sharing these ornate creations with the internet, she likes to go out and bask in the reactions of strangers IRL.

“It’s funny how people will treat you differently based on how your brows are shaped,” Rose says. A 1930s-esque half-moon can give her a glamorous edge, while downward-shaped dashes might make her look meek. “Eyebrows frame the face. They’re the communicators; they show people how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking.”

Mutilating these face-framing hairs, in turn, challenges expectations of how one should look. For Rose, this extreme unpredictability is the draw of experimental eyebrows. And she’s not alone.

Everywhere you look, alien-like eyebrows are infiltrating pockets of pop culture. Alternative It girls like Gabbriette, Julia Fox and Amelia Gray are champions of barely-there brows. Megan Thee Stallion, Rihanna and Kali Uchis have donned ultra-svelte lines in the past. A theme of Pamela Anderson’s ongoing renaissance has been the appreciation of her intensely tweezed arches, while Doja Cat’s shape-shifting above-eye designs — from squiggles of ink to strips of false lashes in place of eyebrow hair — have mirrored her rise as a subversive-style star.

Defiance against the standard of filled-in feathery brows has become its own movement on TikTok, with the app’s thin-eyebrow filter being used in hundreds of thousands of posts. The writing is on the wall (and faces everywhere): Brows today cannot be contained. But why?

For Toronto-based content creator and makeup artist Mei Pang (@meicrosoft), it comes down to self-expression. Microscopic brows are a mainstay of her otherworldly makeup, which she shares with over three million followers on Instagram. Having worn bushy brows in the past, she began fully committing to the thin-eyebrow bit earlier this year and hasn’t gone back. “I consider my eyelid space as real estate,” explains Pang. Her now-signature look — a bald head, symmetrical tattoos and disappearing brows — is the canvas for her creations.

This is not to say that thin brows are a novel concept.

Priscilla Ono, the makeup artist behind some of the aforementioned looks on Megan Thee Stallion, Kali Uchis and Rihanna, credits the return of ’90s fashion with the thin-brow resurgence. “History always repeats itself but in a modern way,” says Ono.

Indeed, just as Cara Delevingne’s 2010s-era thick brows usurped the preceding decade’s plucked brows, the 2020s have seen the pendulum swing in the other direction. But today’s thin arches are not just a redo of early-aughts aesthetics. Rose, for instance, sources inspiration from the 1920s and ’30s. She argues that the most noteworthy brows du jour mix vintage Hollywood glamour, ’90s minimalism and futuristic Y2K codes with contemporary techniques like overlined lips, contour and sharp eyeliner for a fresh finish.

Above all, the mega-plucked brows of 2024 promise something that’s become increasingly hard to find: individuality.

In the age of the internet, our reflections are oversaturated online, Rose explains. Instagram Face, “clean girl” mood boards and “no-makeup” makeup tutorials are reliably dolled out on algorithmic serving platters, encouraging a meticulously crafted effortlessness that does, in fact, demand a lot of effort. “We’re looking at a million faces a day, and we all look very similar,” says Rose. The “natural beauty” standard necessitates full, fluffy eyebrows. “But a skinny brow is so manufactured,” notes Pang. “It’s very purposeful.” In a sea of social media sameness, unusual above-eye creations stand out.

With an unapologetically synthetic style, skinny brows feel disruptive — especially since the aesthetic has been attributed to marginalized communities. Take Rihanna, who went viral for sporting threadlike eyebrows on the cover of Vogue+ earlier this year. Ono, who created the look, emphasizes the long-standing significance of thin brows in Latinx communities. “When I was growing up in Los Angeles in a Mexican household, makeup was a big part of the culture and thin brows were all the rage,” she recalls.

Not to mention their non-binary associations. As Harron Walker wrote in The New York Times, “there is something distinctly queer” about absentee eyebrows. The look has always been important to drag communities, reflecting the art form’s campy creativity. Pang points to Divine, a legendary 1970s- and ’80s-era drag queen whose severe stamped-on brows soared up to her forehead.

For Pang, having spindly short natural brows lends itself to gender-fluid experimentation. When she’s channelling hyper-femininity, she’ll arch them out. If she’s opting for androgyny, she can make them straight and thick. Ultimately, these options empower her to explore new versions of herself.

“I used to think that the longer my hair was, the prettier I was,” admits Pang. “I think I put that emphasis on my brows, too; the bushier my eyebrows were, the more attractive I thought I was.” Shaving her head and dwindling her brows helped her release the need for external validation. “These days, I don’t go for ‘pretty,’” says Pang. “I go for ‘How far can I take this?’”

The purpose of peculiar brows is not to look palatable; it’s to experiment. Arguably, no one embodies this more than Chappell Roan, whose extraordinary ascension to mainstream pop fame has been defined by her refusal to conform to aesthetic norms. Cartoonish brows are a staple of Roan’s self-ascribed tackiness, often courtesy of makeup artist Doniella Davy. Her viral Coachella beauty moment, for instance, featured hot-pink neon above-eye lines.

“That wasn’t even really a brow; that was her forehead,” laughs Davy. “I left the fluffy part of Roan’s actual brow because it was more interesting to me than covering the entire brow and just painting a fake one on.” This technique accentuates artificiality — and that’s the point.

In the grand scheme of things, getting weird with your eyebrows is a minor change to implement. But this intentional mark of bodily autonomy makes a statement about who you are. Plus, it’s just fun.

“Eyebrows are like these giant weird furry accessories,” Davy says. And treating them as such, instead of predetermined shapes that must adhere to beauty standards, can be quite freeing. “Every time I do my brows, I become a different character depending on what shape or technique I do,” says Rose. “It makes me feel like a more heightened version of myself.”

While it can be jarring to transform the arches that anchor facial expressions, it can also lead to self-discovery. If nothing else, it makes trips to the grocery store a little more exciting.

This article appeared in FASHION’s October 2024 issue. Find out more here.