I Tried Kim Kardashian’s Bleached Eyebrows and Realized My Natural Brows Are Just Fine
Kim Kardashian, Lizzo, and Maisie Williams have all tried it
BeautyStyle

Common sense dictates that if Kim Kardashian cottons on to a fashion trend, that trend is, by default, played out. When I saw Kim and her models posing in various nude-colored garments for the most recent Skims campaign, the only thing I could focus on was her eyebrows. They were gone, erased by makeup or bleach, or both, leaving the world to contend with her forehead, her eyes, and the rest of her face.
It’s not that she looks bad, per se, but just different—a high-end America’s Next Top Model makeover for the pretty girl who needs to look more “editorial.” But if her social media is accurate, the brow situation was temporary. Other celebrities, like Lizzo and Maisie Williams, however, have made a more permanent decision, bleaching or lightening their brows to varying results. Perhaps this speaks to the newfound freedom the beauty media is selling—wearing a mask every day briefly obliterated the lipstick market, and beauty companies pivoted over the course of the pandemic’s earlier days to skincare, eye makeup, and yes, eyebrows. But, as the Guardian presupposed in an article published in July, maybe bleached brows are the first post-pandemic trend.
Trends have moved away from the pomade-forward brow of the mid-2010s, as evidenced by the 2016 vs 2021 makeup challenge that proliferated on TikTok, featuring hours and hours of beauty creators doing one half of their face as if they were going to the club in 2016 and the other, as they would now. If we are to take TikTok creators’ word as gospel, the brows of 2016 were blocky and entirely reliant on copious amounts of Anastasia Beverly Hills brow pomade—an eyebrow painted for the cheap seats, visible from across the street and around the corner. Glossier launched its hero product, Boy Brow, in 2015, paving the way for a new eyebrow aesthetic—bushy, full, slightly unkempt, as if you were born with the perfect brows already and did not have to craft them from the remnants of whatever was left from adhering to the thin brow trend of the ’90s. Now, in 2021, eyebrows are doing whatever they want.