Holy pluck: Skinny brows are back
Holy pluck: Skinny brows are back
Plus: Saying "yes!" to resolutions • a surprising overnight eye cream • how to revamp skin care in our 40s
BeWell | The Midst beauty, style & wellness newsletter
By Lauria Locsmondy
I can’t believe my eyes. Not only have we resurfaced dELiA’s silhouettes from the ‘90s, with crop tops and bootleg flares running rampant, but the trend decided to pluck us head to toe and mess with our brows — again.
Trendy Gen-Z models and celebs like Bella Hadid, Doja Cat, Gabbriette Bechtel, and so many more blast their Instas with teeny-tiny brows in the forms of barely-there peaks, colorful, artistic lines, and perfectly penciled arches — just like we did. But this time ‘round (and here’s where we taught them something?), zoomers achieve the look with means far less permanent than tweezing, opting instead to shave, bleach, conceal, and even glue (à la our drag sisters) to get the iconic look.
Does this mean we should abandon our decades of regrowth and exfoliate our microblading to resurrect the phantom brow we so tirelessly adorned? I’ll pull you back with my black velvet choker (now available at retailers everywhere!) to say, “Oh, hell no.”
For the most part, a fuller brow suits (ahem) women our age because it adds a stronger structure to frame our faces. Perfect example? Gwen Stefani. See how her brows transform (with) her face over the years:
The best way to wear the “new” skinny brow is to play, not commit. Since many of us already have an ideal canvas, grab an eyebrow pencil that’s a shade lighter than your hair color — or darker if you’re light blonde/grey or white — and have at it.
While you can use powders or gels with brushes to achieve the look, affordable pencils (like my fave from e.l.f.) are easy to maneuver and cost less than your latte. Just remember the ol’ makeup artist adage: eyebrows are sisters, not twins — and don’t worry about symmetrical perfection.
Like any other beauty trend, brows will (literally) come and go, so I say, play away. Along with your Gen-X sisters, I’ll continue to support your efforts through thick and thin.
2024: Never too late
So many people like to talk about how they don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I’m not one of them. Every January 1st, I sit with my calendar to map out my health (read: weight-loss) goals, along with career objectives, financial plans, and travel hopes, amongst others. I write them down. I dream big. And sometimes, I even achieve them.
My friend Hollie (43) recently tattooed her hand with “never too late.” “Oh, my God!” I thought when I first saw it. (Not the OMG like, why did you do that? — but the OMG like, that’s brilliant.) Talk about a constant reminder, one you can’t ignore, of how aspirations should never escape us, no matter where we are in our linear lifetime, no matter what society tells us we should be or think.
In this mental space, I often think about the achievements — boasted on the internet improperly as irony and fittingly as inspiration — of celebrity women “later” in life. This list includes:
Vera Wang (born 1949) started her career as an actual fashion designer at 40, having previously been a senior fashion editor at Vogue. “When I got engaged, at 39, I was a little beyond the age of most brides and on a quest for a dress. I looked everywhere, from department stores to Chanel couture. … My DNA was to find something I felt passionate about, to make a difference, and to work, so that’s what I did.”
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