The Thick and Thin of Eyebrows

These days, it's very common for women to shape their eyebrows as part of their beauty regimen, but when did this practice start? And why? Molly and Cristen investigate the history of eyebrow-shaping in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never Told You?
From House top works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly Molly. In these

(00:21):
winter months, there are a few things that I really love.
It happened in this season, in the winter time, in
the winter times, and that is the growing of decemberards
November's October. Uh you know the male facial hair that

(00:43):
tends to sprout in these winter lumberjack flannel wearing kinds
of months, right when when it's nippy outside. Yes, they
get a little hair to keep them warm, right. And
there is this specific charity event called November and when
men were supposed to grow mustaches in order to raise

(01:04):
money for charity. Kind of like that. I guess the
larger the mustache gets, the more money people donate. Something
like that. But women have come up with a similar
event for December. Doesn't involve growing mustaches. No, it does
not involve growing mustaches, because that would that would really
be a lot to ask for charity for women to

(01:24):
start growing out mustaches. Instead, it is decemb Brow and
which women are growing out their unibrows for charity, right,
And I believe this was spearheaded by Laura or Feminist
NG and she wrote one, you know, kind of tongue
in cheek post. It's very you know, cheeky, like, oh,
I'm going to grow out my unit brow and this

(01:46):
is the charity the money is going to go to,
and this this way we can participate in this. And
it got picked up by quite a number of other
bloggers and and places in the media. Yeah, people thought
it was kind of absurd, this idea of women growing
out their unibrows. And people thought that this was a
completely absurd idea, this idea of women growing out their unibrows,

(02:08):
because what is more repulsive on a woman than a unibrow.
I mean, we've got Frieda and she's cool, but I
mean not if we had a bunch of Frieda's walking around,
people just go bananas. And that's not your opinion, Christen.
That was the tone of the articles that were published
about this, exactly. And I think that if you go
back and you read the Feministing post on Decembrow, there is,

(02:29):
like you said, a very chungy, cheek tone to it.
But it also points out this question of why are
we so obsessed with our eyebrows, the space in between
our eyebrows, and how thick or thin they are, because
it is a lot to keep up with. Well you know,
she even said, women who don't have a lot of

(02:50):
facial hair growth, especially on the ibrow area, just take
out a marker and uh and just draw it in.
So like I like we said, it's it was very
kind of um, I not funny, and a lot of
people just took it way too seriously. So the thick
and bit of eyebrows, why why are these two just
little patches of hair such a big deal? And they

(03:10):
are weird patches Molly, So I guess the first question
we should answer is why we have them in the
first place. So for that we had over to how
stuffworks dot com, not surprisingly, which tells us that we
most likely have eyebrows. Scientists aren't exactly sure why, but
the most likely explanation for eyebrows is that they help

(03:32):
keep moisture out of our eyes when we sweat or
we walk around in the rain, and this would have
been especially helpful Let's say, if you were trying to
outrun a predator back in the golden oldie days. If
you're running really fast and then sweat got in your eyes,
that would be troublesome. If you're running in the rain,
that would be troublesome. And the article posits that if
we didn't have eyebrows, we probably would have something else

(03:53):
that would have uh taken its place to keep water
out of our eyes, such as perhaps all edge. You know,
we would have had like four heads that extended out
an inch so that it would have kept the water
out of our eyes. So for people out there who
hate their eyebrows, at least we don't have like extremely
prominent brows, yeah, like ledge brows, ledge brows. Uh, So

(04:15):
we have these eyebrows. And even though yeah, the replacement
option of of a ledge ledge brow thick skin around
our eyes is not very appealing, seems like humans are
really not all that down with eyebrows because we have
been altering them since recorded history. And I wonder if

(04:36):
part of it is because, you know, eyebrows are expressive,
like a raised eyebrow, mystery, um, incredulous, astonish, you don't
want to look, you know, incredulous are astonished all the time. Um,
So I think that the part of the thing that
we can interpret feeling from eyebrows. Maybe that's why we
get so upset with, you know, changing them up. But

(04:57):
like you said, Christen, since since the dawn of man
time people have been like, hey, let's let's mess with
that hair over our eyes. Yes, And here are some
fascinating tidbits about eyebrows and our history with eyebrows that
comes from the Encyclopedia of Hair, a wonderful book, by
the way, which was written by Victoria Shiro. And if

(05:18):
we go back to ancient Egypt, big surprise. Here Egyptians
used coal to darken and define their eyebrows, and they
also emphasize the area beneath the brows and the eyelids
with colored shadows. So they really did it up. And
an ancient Greece women you suit to darken their eyebrows,
and they would make fake eyebrows from dyed goat's hair

(05:40):
and attached them to their forehead with tree resin. Now,
if you were a lady back in the Byzantine days,
you might pluck the eyebrows in a straight line and
then draw a black line beneath them. Fast forward to
the Middle Ages and the fashionable thing would be plucking
all or most of the eyebrows, so that you have

(06:00):
the thin lines, the thin lines. And also, uh Lissa
bethan arrow. We think about Queen Elizabeth, how she had
that really high forehead and no eyebrows. That high forehead
is thanks to corrosive hair dyes so would kill all
all everything that was in a radius of that area.
So um because of those hair dyes, the completely empty

(06:24):
forehead with completely plucked eyebrows came into fashion in England
and in the sixteenth century in Europe. People disliked the
thought of bushy eyebrows so much that they would rub
walnut oil on their children's eyebrows to discourage the hair grow.
But as we will see, and as continues to happen today,
this look goes out of style, yes, as things do.

(06:47):
And so when the kids didn't have any eyebrows, they
took mice and made eyebrows out of mouse hides and
attached them to their foreheads because the walnut oil had
destroyed the ability of the hair to grow back. See,
I mean, we think we have it hard with all
this plucking and waxing and threading. At least we're not

(07:07):
gluing mice for to our faces. And I feel like,
you know, I feel like this is a lesson we
need to take today because, as I said, we're gonna
fast forward in a bit and we'll see how the
trends are constantly changing and we don't want to end
up like the people who are wearing mouse hides on
their head. So if you ever feel like your eyebrows
are out of style, just wait, just wait, it's coming

(07:30):
back around. Yeah, let's get to the twentieth century, because
in the twentieth century people just are so a D
D with their eyebrows. Okay, one minute thin is in
next minute it's thick. So let's just let's hop through
the twentieth century, right quick, Molly Well, and you've better
remember that one of the big things we have in
the twentieth century is cinema, the moving picture show, and

(07:52):
the lovely actresses of the stage and screen, as with
most fashion styles, really influence our eyebrows. And if you
think about silent films, the actors are always extremely expressive
in their faces because they have to get across all
of the emotion through their facial expressions since they don't
have any words they can use, and so thin was

(08:14):
very in for silent film stars because the thin arches
are really well defined than arches were thought to be
more expressive and would deliver those facial expressions more effectively.
Exactly like actress like Greta Garbou, she plucked her brows
so they made a really distinct arch um. Marlena Dietrich

(08:35):
eliminated her brows and drew h drew a line above
her normal brow line to get some some expressivity. It's
not a word, I just made it. But then when
we move into the nineteen forties and we have World
War Two and people are really having to just roll
up their shirt sleeves, get out and dig their victory gardens,
the eyebrows become less high maintenance, they become thicker, are

(09:00):
natural looking, and to many people this was a no
nonsense look that connoted the idea that women were strong
and capable while the men were outsiding. They were on
the home front, taking care of the home, going out
into the workplace and all of that. They did not
have time to draw on a brow line every day.
But after the war ends, the eyebrows thin again. I

(09:24):
mean it's not quite as thin as the twenties and
thirties um and the eyebrows are still very well defined
with a high arch. And think about people like Elizabeth Taylor,
Audrey Hepburn, Joan Crawford. They didn't have pencilson eyebrows, but
they were they did have that very distinct shape and
very very darkened eyebrows. They were maintained. And then in

(09:46):
the sixties, women kind of go crazy with their eyebrows
because this is the sixties, you know, this is an
age of shaving them all off, tweezing them all off.
You might throw some glitter up in there, some feathers,
you might be dazzle your eyebrows, so things. That's when
that's when I think the floodgates open and anything, anything goes.
The seventies, brows are thinner and shorter, and then natural

(10:08):
brows come back during the eighties with a big hair.
Think about Brookshields. Brookshields is pretty much upheld as the
eyebrow icon of the nineteen eighties, and in the Encyclopedia
of Hair, Victoria's shiro U theorizes that natural brows are
really in because of women in the workplace who are
trying to make a statement with their very masculine, sort

(10:33):
of over overly angular business attire, including those huge suit
jackets and large shoulder pads. Should like to think of,
you know, with the Kristi Ally's wardrobes and cheers. She
always verse those enormous blazers. And along with that you
have those thick, very commanding eyebrows. But it seems that
you know, whether they're thick or thin, that just depends

(10:55):
on the decade you're living in. But you know, once
we got past those really ancient so we talked about
where the people were just drawing lines straight across their forehead.
Unibrows have not been in you know, at any point
during that time. And Cheryl points out that there was
a poem that people would say in the twentieth century
which I've never heard before. Maybe you guys have if
your eyebrows meet above your nose, you will never wear

(11:17):
your wedding clothes. Had you heard of that? Questions? And well,
according to Sharrow, that was a rhyme that was common. Um,
despite the fact I've never heard it, So, uh, whether
they're thicker than people seem to want to get rid
of that hair in between and in the eighties is
when that quest to keep the unibrow free and clear.

(11:39):
Starts to develop into its own industry. We have the
rise of makeup artists such as Brazilian born artists Paulo Siskira,
who has been known as the eyebrow Guru. I'd like
to be an eyebrow guru. I don't know is that
I don't know? I want to rethink that one. So
fast forward to the nineties and the style relaxed is

(12:00):
a little bit. It's not extremely thick, it's not extremely thin.
But in the nineties we do have the rise in
popularity of eyebrow waxing. Now, we did a lot of
research on different methods you could do to get rid
of unwanted hair, whether you want a thin style, you know,
more natural style with just no unit brow, and whether
you wax tweez thread. You're looking at two weeks. Yeah,

(12:23):
it all lasts about two weeks. If you can get
the hair out of the ripped out of the follicles
by force, you got about two weeks before it starts
to poke back through. But the question is, Kristin, are
I've got my two weeks, I've got my method of
hair removal lined up. How much hair should I remove
to be in style. Because I will say I told

(12:44):
you this before we started this podcast. One time in
college someone said to me, that would be really attractive
if I just got my eyebrows taken care of. What burn? Wow?
And uh so, I don't think that's an uncommon thing
that women here. So when you've got the tweezers or
in the salon, how do you make sure that you're
gonna stay in style? Because I will say the one

(13:05):
tip my mother, one of the only beauty tips I
ever got, was to not plug out all my eyebrows. Well,
I think I think this is a good rule of them.
And this is coming from Rammy Gaffney, who was also
known as the King of Brows, not to be confused
with Paulo Sakira, the eyebrow Guru. But Rami said, there
are many trends in makeup, but I think the eyebrows
should be classic. I think of the eyebrow as a

(13:27):
feature like your nose. It shouldn't be trendy. It should
be classic and flattering to your face. Now, I think
Rami the King of Brows, made a very good point
here because when we pulled up eyebrow trend articles from
the New York Times. And yes, you would be surprised, folks,
how much attention the New York Times space you eyebrow trends.

(13:48):
Just from two thousand seven to two thousand nine they
were telling us that first of all, that thick was
back in grow aml ladies, make him as bushy as possible,
even even bro some upwards to in hand, plump them,
plump them up. But then by two thousand nine they
were telling us that supposedly the trend was going to

(14:09):
be no eyebrows at all, shave them off entirely. And
I have to say we read one piece. It was
on Nightline. We were in the transcript of it, and
they said, before you shave off both eyebrows, just shave
off one and see how it looks, which I have
to say might be the worst advice I ever say
given Thanks Nightline. That's for great advice for for advice
for how to look like a fool. So I think

(14:31):
that the King of Brows does have a point in
that you really can't pay attention to these trends because
from like christ And said, in the course of two
years we went from bushy to zero. I do think
it's interesting though that the thicker trend seemed to come
along with less feminine clothing styles, you know when you

(14:52):
always have on the runways to swing back to men's
where that seems to happen every other season or so.
When The New York Times was reporting on this, it
said that these plumped up, fluffier eyebrows were more in
vogue because of quote clunky angular fall fashions. At the
same time, this is corresponding to more recession era fashion.

(15:16):
There's a little more no nonsense like we see back
in World War Two. So I'm wondering if maybe thicker
eyebrows are a recession era trend. I think that's a
pretty interesting hypothesis, Kristen. But I think that, you know,
when it shifts back to the more dainty dresses and
then I guess then eyebrows will be in again. I
think that's really, I don't know, kind of sad because

(15:37):
you know, one of the reasons why I know eyebrows
and really thin eyebrows came into being, besides the fact
that you know, actresses could be more expressive, was because
of this idea that any facial hair met you were
a man, right, Because we haven't talked at all about
male eyebrow grooming. At this point, you can pretty much
assume that all of this eyebrow information is directed completely

(15:58):
at women. And so I think that you know, part
of the reason why those really dainty e twenties actresses
wanted to distinguish themselves also from the male actors, and
so that's why they have the really thin brows. And
just because you know that, you know, those fashionable styles
will change and we'll get back into the less no
nonsense era. But the way should share our eyebrows off? Again,

(16:19):
I don't think we should shape our eyebrows off either,
because what are we gonna do when we're caught out
in the rain or we're sweating profusely. I mean, all
that water is just going to go straight to the
eyes and we'll be longing for ledge brows. Yes, we're
meant to have some eyebrows. But my one trend eyebrowed
trend that I could not find any information on is

(16:41):
male eyebrow grooming. And you know what's happening. And I
know what's happening because I know men who quote unquote
manscape for lack of a better, less infuriating word. So
it's happening, but I do I do think it's kind
of kind of telling that not many, not many men's
sites want to cop up to them also grooming their eyebrows.

(17:03):
Maybe I'm just mistaken. Man out there, please correct me
if I'm wrong, but that was one thing I couldn't find. Well,
let's circle back. So we've we've done the history of
the eyebrow. We've talked about the different trends that eyebrows
can take on. So my question for you, Christen, even
though December is over, the holidays have past, it's still winter,
it are you gonna grow out a unibrow? You know, Molly,

(17:28):
as a fair skinned woman with dark brown eyebrows. I
will confess you right now that I'm far too vain
to grow out my unibrow. So I feel like that
is sort of become the standard as we think that
two is two is good, two is better than one
in this case. Um but I don't think that if

(17:49):
someone like Lori from Feministing wants to grow out one,
that it should have been as big a deal as
it was in the blogosphere on the Internet. Um but
I think this is where we're going to turn over
to you guys, and I'm sure there are listeners out
there who have some eyebrow horror stories, and I especially
want to hear from the men on this point. So

(18:09):
we were opening up to you, guys, eyebrows thin, thick between?
Where where do you stand on him? The email addresses
mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com and let's read
a few emails, Kristen. I have one here from Nico,
who wrote about the Female Superheroes podcast, and she writes,

(18:31):
one of my favorites was tank Girl, who you may
have touched on in the grunge girls of the nineties description,
but nonetheless she has a cut above and stands alone
as a strong female heroine in her own right. I
was also a huge fan of elf Quest, which had
a myriad of characters, both male and female, that all
possessed her ow qualities. Both of these examples are outside
the norm of the female stereotypes you describe the women

(18:51):
tend to fall within in the mainstream comic culture. There's
also a girly girl, a sassy five year old drawn
by Peter Bag with two teeth uh a set of
agressive ponytails, and she doesn't take crap from anyone. She's
absolutely hilarious and all honesty, she's a bully, but a
funny one at that. So those are three of my
favorites that show ladies and comics in a different light.

(19:11):
So thank you, Nika. Well. I have another email here
in regard to your female Superheroes too part episode Extravaganza,
and this is from Greg and he says, I'm surprised
that there was no mention of bat Woman. Of all superheroes,
bat Woman is my favorite. She doesn't conform to the
usual female superhero stereotype mentioned in your podcast, with the

(19:33):
skimpy costume, impossible curves, and the long flowing hair. She's
also not part of a group or team and deserves
recognition for her strong individual abilities both as a superhero
and a woman. Cat Kaine bat Woman is also one
of the very few lesbian characters in the comic book universe,
and her writers, Slash Creators, have garnered much praise from

(19:54):
many LGBT groups. She's a character with many layers and
is a refreshing read from the bundance of the usual
heroine stereotypes that are outlined in your podcast. I'm happy
that she's finally receiving her own solo title this winter,
So thank you Gregg and everyone else who has written
into our email mom stuff at how stuff works dot com.

(20:15):
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(20:36):
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