Also I Hate The Word “Fleek”

Some people have really strong feelings about things that they really shouldn’t. Like, some people HATE pumpkin spice as if pumpkin spice personally hurt them. Like pumpkin spice broke up with them via text message. Like pumpkin spice punched their mom in the face. Like pumpkin spice used the key they gave it “for emergencies only” while they were on vacation and had a gang bang with strawberry acai and white chocolate mocha in their marital bed. But the truth is, pumpkin spice never did anything to anybody, and while the kind of hate pumpkin spice (or any “basic bitch” bullshit) gets is way too complicated for this blog post, it’s a great example of something that doesn’t deserve the treatment it gets, and I need you to know this post is self aware. I’m about to say something, and you’re going to think I’m a huge hypocrite, but bear with me, I’ll explain.

I. Hate. Eyebrows.

I hate those thick fucking, fake-ass, perfectly square, stamped-on-looking, woolly bear bitches the most–if you’ve been on the internet, you know the ones: Instagram brows. Now, like I said, this post is self aware. I should NOT hate eyebrows, and even more so I shouldn’t hate painstakingly cultivated ones. Eyebrows didn’t kill my father. They didn’t kick my cat. Eyebrows didn’t vote for Donald Trump. Eyebrows are honestly one of the least possibly offensive things. And yet…

Eyebrows, or rather, what they have become, offend me to my very core, and it’s mostly for this simple fact: the same people who made fun of a naturally thick-browed, ten year old me are the ones instagramming and praising these mile-high, drawn-on abominations.

Eyebrowminations.

Here’s the thing: I don’t give a shit what people do with their own bodies. Yes, I would encourage you to be healthy, but if you choose to fill yourself with crap then so be it. If you choose to tattoo a portrait of Dolly Parton on your left temple then by god, you do you–you could honestly have chosen much worse. Pierce your butthole closed for all I care. What I hate about the current brow trend is not really that it exists, but that it’s so insincere.

And not in the way that most fashion is insincere. Sure, people follow trends because they’re cool, but I’d reckon there are more than a handful of people who actually like how certain trends look, or at least grow to like them. My mom fondly looks back at her Farrah Fawcett feathered hair and would most definitely still have it if she hadn’t succumbed to peer pressure a mere four years ago. But the thing with this eyebrow debacle (debrowcle) is that no one really likes thick brows, they just like painting really wide, tapered, arching lines on their foreheads.

Yes, I am salty. Salty AF, some might say, because this girl has gone through hell and back to minimize her own brows at the behest of society. I have shaved, waxed, plucked, and threaded these little furry assholes into shape for years because I am weak and care way too much what people think of me. And you’re telling me I just could have waited it out til 2015? No, I couldn’t have, because what I got going on, which are actual, real life, thick brows, are not at all what’s being touted all over Youtube as a “natural brow look.”

I blew up at one of my best friends back when I was 20 or so. She had these gorgeous, delicate, wonderfully shaped brows that were so effortless. At least, that’s how I saw them; I am sure she, like most people, has a very different view of her own body. Regardless, if I could have replaced my own brows with replicas of hers, I would have done so in an instant and never touched them again. She texted me one day, very excited, to say she’d had her brows waxed. I should have been excited for her, supportive, asked questions about the process, anything but what I did which was basically berate her. If her brows weren’t good enough, then mine would never be. Besides a whole boatload of other shit I was going through at the time that no doubt contributed to my fuckery, I was too filled with self loathing to support my friend, and told her that her decision was dumb. Eyebrows made me selfish, and that’s one of the worst things you can be.

And this was before the big box brow trend even started!

So yes, I’m salty about the whole thing and I’ve grown to just loathe eyebrows. I hate the effort that has to be put into them, I hate that that effort is so incredibly painful, and I hate how shitty they make me feel about myself.

But I shouldn’t hate eyebrows. They serve a purpose. I was going to make this a Thing I Don’t Fucking Understand, but I actually do understand them. I get the totally fucked up desire to want to be pretty and doing the dumbest possible things to get that way, but I’m never going to stop hating eyebrows. Maybe someday I’ll shave them off completely. That might even be a trend on the horizon. And I’ll probably be salty about that.

But for now all I can saw is this, all of this nonsense, is browdiculous!