Eyebrow Styles, Permanent Hair & New Removal

Plucking Away At Perfection: Eyebrow Styles Through the Ages

Eyebrows. Simply our awning to the eyelid, protecting us from foreign objects like lice and excessive dandruff. Considering its inauspicious position on our face, when did we start caring about how eyebrow styles frame the rest our faces? Many fingers might point to Persia and China, areas of the Eastern world that innovatively coined the ancient art of eyebrow threading, (using a tightly wound cotton thread to graze off hairs.) though no one can actually prove where which Eastern country is responsible. Other claims of where eyebrow threading eyebrow styles originated include India and Turkey. Eyebrow threading is painless and suitable for sensitive skin, despite the image it conjures of getting your forehead embroidered.

But eyebrow threading isn’t the beginning of this fascinating tale—the enriching catalog of eyebrow styles begins with Ancient Egypt, where they both commonly plucked out all of their eyebrows and hair to avoid lice but contradictorily adorned the all-seeing Eye of the sun god Ra with a very bushy eyebrow(later, the symbol of Freemasonry). Additionally, the Udjat eye with a thinly lined eyebrow(a lost organ of a god) was considered the key to healing, placed on doorways and one of the most common themes in Egyptian art. These two very visible, contrasting eyebrow styles imagery in Egyptian culture led to a veritable eyebrow revolution. To these Egyptian eyebrow styles trailblazers, the only thing more important than framing one’s eyes with a penciled in brow was defining one’s eye in the smoldering, charcoal brimmed manner of Cleopatra.

Penciled-In Eyebrows

The 1920s Silver Screen goddess look was incomplete without impeccably plucked and penciled eyebrows. Close inspection of 20s and 30s icons like Garbo and Dietrich show that they kept some eyebrow hairs, albeit sparsely, underneath slick coats of eyebrow pencil. One supposed incentive for the thin brow on screen was that they could easily convey expressions in early film’s long shots. Tragically, very thin eyebrows paired with penciled in lips were adopted as a gang sign of Mexican American girl gangs…a long shot itself from the eyebrow styles of the silver screen!

The penciled-in Western eyebrow is mirrored by Japan’s noted defined eyebrow styles in kabuki theater and with their geishas. Films like Rashomon showcase a female lead in kabuki makeup, who painted on expressive eyebrows over her existing eyebrows. “Double” eyebrows were also fashionable for Byzantine women, who often tweezed their existing eyebrows in a straight line and accented them with a drawn-in pencil line beneath them—not unlike the Egyptians’ smoldering eye-accentuating black lining that bordered the creases of the eyelid.

Kabuki eyebrow styles are so well known for being dramatically raised that they have a pediatric congenital disorder named after them—not racially tinged at all, the Kabuki Syndrome is an extremely rare condition where non-Asian children with preposterously arched eyebrows have mental retardation. The gene mutation affects 1:32,000 births; interestingly, children with Kabuki syndrome mental retardation are marked with having extremely happy dispositions.

The Saga of the Filled-In Brow

Filled-in eyebrow styles have been popular since Ancient Greece, when women rubbed soot (absokos) on their eyebrows. The transition from the sparse skeleton eyebrows to the fuller eyebrow styles prevalent in the 40s and 50s is no more recognizable than on melodrama screen deity Joan Crawford. In the 1930s, Crawford is almost unrecognizable dressed as supporting flapper “wild child” characters—her iconic facial overreactions were much less effective without the boldly dark filled in eyebrows that framed her eyes. She may be uniquely responsible for what are deemed “diva arch” eyebrow styles of the 1940s and 50s.

Natural blondes with sun-faded brows saw a unique challenge with the trend of filled-in grease painted brows. Should they just use brown? Many ill-advised blondes adopted the use of a grayish green eyebrow paint. Noticeably, many of Hitchcock’s blonde leading ladies used gray eyebrow grease, with sometimes garish results—the Technicolor in Vertigo bringing out the olive-y tint in Kim Novak’s then-trendy eyebrow styles can be wince-inducing to the modern movie viewer. Unnatural blondes like Marilyn Monroe added dark eyebrow grease for a stark contrast, a move that Madonna later re-populized in the late 1980s. Indeed, “unkempt” or full brow styles have come and gone, though noticeably enjoying a hump of popularity in the late 1970s when the natural no-makeup look was all the rage. The 1980s full brows differed because they were often (especially in Madonna’s iconic case) styled to complement big hair.

“Weave” Eyebrows: A New Trend in Eyebrow Styles?

The concept of pasting alien hair particles to one’s forehead is hardly new. Women of the Elizabethan Age carved out extremely unique eyebrow styles by plucking all of the hair from their forehead, raising their hairline but also completely removing the eyebrow. The practice of total eyebrow removal had been prevalent since the 17th Century—the Mona Lisa, famed for her quizzical smile, also has the Renaissance-era patented “empty forehead”. Baroque women pasted “weave” eyebrows to their bare foreheads made from mouse skin--so a health concern associated with the eyebrows wasn’t their primary concern (although their attempting to avoid eyebrow lice is a plausible theory). Another possible reason why aristocratic women from the Renaissance to the Baroque period had no eyebrows was the amount of lead they had in their make-up to lighten skin for that fresh-faced leaden glow! Proof to boot: Queen Elizabeth, a fierce ambassador for these lethal potions, was supposedly bald under her wigs by the age of 30.

One odd detail to mouse skin eyebrow styles of Baroque and Elizabethan aristocracy is that women pasted the “falsies” extremely high, to give the impression they were constantly surprised—a cosmetic attribute of too-tight plastic surgery or Botox eyebrow freezing that most modern “kept” women aim to avoid.

The latest trend in disputably wacky eyebrow styles comes from Haiti, where some salons offer to braid your eyebrows and stitch in fake eyebrows to match the “weave” color of your hair—especially useful if you go for a very bright color like bottle blond or firecracker red! Time will only tell what the newest trend of eyebrow styles will be. Have we already achieved everything possible in eyebrow styles? The recycled kabuki eyebrows George Lucas envisioned for Princess Padme of the future point to yes.

Find out how you, too can innovate with new and different eyebrow styles with new hair removal solutions! Fill out the form on this page or call the number listed to contact an eyebrow styles representative today!

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