They say your eyebrows are the window to your soul.
This may be why I and women like me have worried about our forehead hair for decades.
From waxing, waxing, microblading, and even shaving all at one point (a cardinal sin, trust me, I know), my eyebrows have been through it all.
And yet, with all the effort and money spent, I still can’t look at my old eyebrows without cringing.
A similar phenomenon is trending on TikTok, where creators, mostly in their 20s and 30s, share selfies before transitioning to an earlier version of themselves with different eyebrows.
“Eyebrow blindness” has taken over the platform, with women rising through the ranks to admit that they too are ashamed, or at least ashamed of their previous eyebrows.
Eyebrow trends have fluctuated over the decades, often from one extreme to the other, from thin to bushy to seemingly Sharpie-marked.
“Normal” people aren’t the only ones susceptible to the trend – celebrities are too.
Actresses like Jennifer Aniston, who played Rachel Green on Friends, have switched from thin eyebrows to fuller, thicker styles.
Others, like Olivia Wilde and Demi Lovato, confessed their excessive regrets.
“I don’t tweeze my eyebrows. I’ve let them grow for years. I try to fill them in wherever nature leaves me,” Wilde told T Magazine.
I’d even go so far as to say that many have catapulted the rise of certain beauty trends, including the popularity of “blocked” brows during the universal popularity of pomade and the reign of Kylie Cosmetics in the 2000s.
Needless to say, you can’t underestimate the importance of a good pair of eyebrows, which makes looking at old photos of me even harder.
All I can think as I look at high school Nancy’s thick, dark eyebrows is: People must have thought I was an angry teenager.
In retrospect, I should have been angrier.
I am of the opinion that someone’s mistake is a problem that should be fixed by your community.
If I saw someone’s fly unbuttoned or a friend coming out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to their shoe, I would want to be the person to spare them further embarrassment.
For reasons (which I can now grudgingly understand), my friends at the time did not inform me about my eyebrow blindness.
Real friends would have told me the truth about my Sharpie eyebrows, which looked almost identical to the eyebrows of Red J. Bird, the protagonist of the popular Angry Birds game at the time.
Real friends would have done everything possible to prevent a supposed friend from going out into the world looking what.
In retrospect, although I still feel a shiver run through my body when I think about those times, I realize there is no one to blame.
As much as we hate to admit it, we all fall for trends in an attempt to conform to the insatiable standard of beauty.
My friends probably didn’t care how my eyebrows looked — they were probably hyper-fixated on their own.
These days, I’m more or less tuned out of the noise than other people, brands, and trends think my eyebrows should be like this.
Instead, I’ve gotten used to letting my brows grow out to their natural shape, plucking a few eyebrows here and there, and cutting back on the heavy pomades—and it’s probably for the best.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story