Eyebrows
Arched, straight and soft-angled brows, the unibrow, and threading and shaping. 7 face guides on EveryFaceShape so far.
Eyebrows have a head near the nose, an arch and a tail. They may be arched, straight, soft-angled, thick, thin or joined as a unibrow. Brows frame the eyes and carry much of a face's expression. Their thickness and colour are largely inherited, but they are also among the most groomed parts of the face, shaped by threading, waxing, tweezing, pencil and, recently, semi-permanent tattoo.
Shaping
Threading, rolling a twisted cotton thread over the skin to lift out rows of hairs, is old in South Asia, Iran, Central Asia and the Arab world and is standard in Indian beauty parlours. Waxing and tweezing are common elsewhere. Brow shapers often place the arch above the outer edge of the iris and suggest straight brows to shorten a long face and arched brows to lengthen a round one.
Changing fashions
Brow fashions have swung widely. Heian court women in Japan removed their brows and painted new ones high on the forehead, a custom called hikimayu. Joined brows were admired in ancient Greece and in parts of Central Asia, where women drew them with usma dye. Very thin brows were fashionable in the 1920s and 1990s, and thick, natural brows from the 2010s.
Famous brows face guides
Further reading
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Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Hikimayu: Unknown author, Public domain, source
- Eyebrow: Film screenshot, Public domain, source
- Brow ridge: Falbygdens museum, CC BY-SA 1.0, source
- Unibrow: Z11o22, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Threading: butterbeeee, CC BY-SA 2.0, source