Eyebrow trends really mark an era. Recently we’ve seen the no eyebrow look come back and of course there’s the skinny eyebrow look that I appreciate somewhat. I’m a 90s girl and while I never want to go back to overplucked pencil thin brows, I like that brow trends aren’t as full and slug-like as they were just a few years ago. What is this new “straight brow” trend though? Apparently it’s shaving off the tail of your eyebrow and drawing in the end a little higher and shorter. It’s said to lift your face and give a much different look. TikTokers are trying it with mixed results. (They’re calling it “Bella Hadid eyebrows” but she has such thin brows I don’t see it. I see it more on Natalie Portman.) I’m going to quote Yahoo’s “In the Know” because they explain this well. I’m also including several TikToks below that show women doing this to themselves.
A new eyebrow trend is taking over TikTok, and it’s sparked a bit of a battle between the generations. According to Gen Z, super-thin and straight eyebrows are in. But according to millennials — who are still recovering from their own super-thin eyebrow phase that spanned the ’90s and early ’00s — this all feels like bad déjà vu.
The trend has been called various things, from straight brows to lifted brows to Bella Hadid eyebrows, since the model has more or less become known for the extreme look.
And while it’s certainly not for everyone, countless TikTokers have been experimenting with the new trend for months now to see how it might give their face a “lifted” look — with varying degrees of success.
“I never realized how much eyebrows drag a face down,” wrote Elizabeth Monahan (@elizabeth.marie) in her TikTok caption.
Her post, which later went viral, drew a ton of comments from people who either loved the look or absolutely hated it…
Like it or not, Monahan’s viral TikTok went on to inspire a lot of other TikTokers to do the same, and they’ve been posting their own results for the world to see.
I’m not about to shave off the ends of my eyebrows to try this, but I penciled the ends higher and put a little concealer on the tails and they look good. My brows are light and they aren’t as well defined as most of these women on TikTok though. I’ve watched countless videos and bought so many different products and they always end up just looking slightly better than natural. I think that’s the real stickler – getting your brows well defined regardless of the shape you choose. I asked a makeup expert, Ameerah Muhammad, for a quote on this trend. (You can see Ameerah’s YouTube channel here.) She cautioned that it’s foolish to shave off your brows and wrote. “I think it’s a retread of an old trend. Gen Z and the Tiktok beauty generation loves to think they have discovered something new. What we call matte skin- they call ‘Cloud skin’. What we call ‘dewy’ they call ‘skin flooding’. It’s all a bit silly IMO. Experimenting with brow trends can be fun, but I think Millennials and Gen Xers would caution Gen Z not to do anything with their brows that they can’t regrow. Most of us are STILL dealing with the repercussions of over-plucking our brows. You can achieve the exact same “lifted” look with concealer and contour!”
This woman agrees as she was not happy with her results.
@tyleepeek Is there even a difference 🤣 #bellahadid #bellahadideyebrows #straighteyebrows #fyp #foryou #trending ♬ original sound – TJ
Here’s the original post that went viral. I checked out the Instagram for this creator, Elizabeth Marie, and her new brows look gorgeous. She looks a little startled here. I remember that look well.
@ellizabeth.marie I never realized how much eyebrows drag a face down🥲
I think this woman had great results, but maybe she’s just a fabulous makeup artist.
@beautybyjanae Replying to @_artofdecay ‼️RESULTS‼️DO YOU LIKE MY BEFORE OF AFTER BROWS?! #browtutorial #makeup #beauty #browroutine #browmapping #symmetricaleyebrows #makeuptipsandtricks #makeuptutorial ♬ original sound – Janae Lockard
Photos credit: Cover Images, Avalon.red and via Instagram
My blond brows naturally peter out about 2/3 of the way to the end. I’ll give this a try since I always use a little pencil or powder on them if I’m wearing makeup but I suspect I will just look surprised.
I really hate that dense stenciled-on look. Influencers will try anything for content and clicks, but I’ve seen it out in the wild and it looks terrible. Why????
like they drew their brows on with a sharpie!
Seems like it’s just trying to imitate the results of a brow lift procedure. That said, different face shapes and eyes prob need diff approaches but hey, I’m no expert.
I agree with you.
With that said, I always thought Natalie Portman had big eyes.
For some reason her eyes look smaller with the straight eyebrows. At least in the pic above.
But, like you said, different face shapes and eyes need different approaches.
I think I’m going to skip the straight brow trend.
I like full, arched eyebrows.
No. My brows are too arched to change to straight. Besides which, it’s easier to tell people off without a word when you can raise a brow like Scarlett O’Hara.
Same. My grandmother looked a lot like Vivien Leigh and My Dad could actually lift one eyebrow like that. I can’t do it but I have the same kind of high arch. I don’t think the straightened look would work for me either. Besides, I kind of like my eyebrows fine the way they are. Maybe I’ll try the quick fix with concealer to lift them a bit at the edges, just to see how it looks.
Haha. I have always been able to hyper lift my left brow, and my brow shape is very arched. I don’t think I ever made a connection between Scarlett and my one raised eyebrow, but I love it!
Me too! I can do it with my right brow and I’ve always liked being able to do the Scarlett RBF.
As a teen of the 90’s that is infact still dealing with the insane over plucking I did, the thought of shaving beautiful natural eyebrow hair off gives me a visceral reaction. NOOOO! STAHP!
Same with my brows! I never made a connection either. I can raise the left really high and the right just a little. I wonder why only one brow will lift easily.
I’m a skincare junkie and whenever there’s a new gen z trend like “slugging” or whatever, I just laugh and feel elderly. Geriatric millennials and above know this as “moisturizing properly” and using an occlusive if you have issues with waterloss. Jesus.
I say let them try. We all did and the results were hilarious looking back. My eyebrows are nice and full and all I do is have them cleaned up a bit every few weeks. The natural shape of your brows most likely compliments your face best.
Totally agree and as someone who is also a skincare junkie, so many of these trends supposedly “invented” by Gen Z make me chuckle. It’s like they’re the AI generation in terms of appropriating ideas/content/trends/etc. that either already existed for years or did exist years ago and were intentionally abandoned, but they just call it something slightly different and the media falls all over itself rushing to congratulate them for how brilliant they are because of it.
Also as a skincare person, I am not really swayed by a 20-something proclaiming a skincare product is amazing. I had an early 20s coworker once go on and on about how great this one skincare product (from Laneige) was, and there was part of me that side-eyed it. Like, girl, your skin looks great because you’re 23, not because you use this one particular product. Come find me when you’re 33 and then we can talk.
LOL Yeah, I’m 39. I’m not the Tik Tok demographic. To be fair though, the Laneige Lip Glowy Balm is perfection.
Ha! Yeah I saw something recently talking about how Vaseline on your lashes is a new thing and I’m like, dude we used Vaseline for everything in the 90s!
@tealily (love your handle) I LOL reading your note.
I’ve been using Vaseline for ‘everything’ since the ’70s!!
Vaseline and Vicks Vapor Rub are my go-to’s for pretty much anything that goes sideways w/my exterior.
@Surly Gale lol! What’s old is ever new, I guess!!
Oh my god! I straight-ass brown are FINALLY in style?! Man, this is going to be an awesome couple of months while I’m in trend. 😂
Natalie Portman just looks like she is too botoxed to make a facial expression, I think it’s not that her eyebrow tails are straight but that the arch of her eyebrow has collapsed
She’s always had super straight brows though, even as a kid.
Yep, Natalie has pretty much had the same brows since time memorial, regardless of trends. I always envied her and Alexis Bleidel their brows back in the late 90’s and wished to emulate them in my younger days!
Natalie for sure. I also think Ariana is a prime example because her whole look changed after she made her brows flat. Brooke Shields had full AND flat brows, as did Jennifer Love Hewitt and Neve Campbell (elder Millennial icons!) back in the day. I think it gives people a more innocent, girl-next-door allure and the fact that it supposedly makes your eyes bigger is probably because it enhances the doe-eyed look.
I don’t have a lot of natural arch in my brows anyway. But I don’t know about this trend. What I really hate is that fluffy “caterpillar” brow or whatever they call it. That needs to die, imo.
I’m Latina and my brows are naturally 2 very hungry caterpillars that occasionally come to kiss in the middle, so I want the fluffy brow trend to just fully move into Frida territory!
Haha! This is the thing about brow “trends” though… we all have a certain shape of brow that we’re born with, and they all look good with our faces! Why try to force something else?
I did try this actually by changing how I pencil bc my brows are pretty sparse at the tail (no major commitment) and TO ME it made my eyes look droopier at the outer corners?? But I’m no MUA so maybe I’d need to adjust how I line my eyes too and just typing that makes me exhausted
“According to Gen Z, super-thin and straight eyebrows are in.” — Look, just because they’re in their 20s doesn’t make them right about this. Overplucking your brows so they look super-thin and straight might look cute and on-trend now, but you’ll be paying for it the rest of your life and when the brow trends inevitably spin back around to thick brows again, you’ll be completely screwed. Also, thin brows look so harsh on like 90 percent of people who attempt them, and if you’re past the age of like 25, they’ll make you look much older than you actually are.
— Love, a millennial who learned this lesson the hard way
Boomer here. Learned the same lesson the hard way, starting in high school. We all wanted Faye Dunaway’s eyebrows, seen in the Bonnie & Clyde movie–so a late 60s/early 70s reintroduction of a 30s era look. I have thin baby-fine hair, brows included, and as tealily notes above, whatever we’re born with works for us so why do we try to change it?
Yup – Boomers and Gen X are now doing stuff like mircoblading and stencil makeup and stuff to fix past mistakes.
Leave your natural shape, clean it up a bit if you need to, and don’t worry about trends that are probably already over by the time everyone starts talking about ti.
What next in trends? I vote No on shaving and over plucking.
I would be careful with the eyebrows. Mine, which I used to pluck, have become so thin since menopause. It actually started during perimenopause. I have no idea if my over plucking is to blame, but I would advise caution.
I love a beautiful arch and well-filled brow, probably in part because that’s unattainable for me with my sparse brows. But I’ve been so glad to see the overdone, fuzzy-caterpillar look phased out.
This had been the trend in korea for years. When I moved there I changed my eyebrows to the straight look and it does make you look more youthful and softer. Not sure about if it makes your eyes look bigger or not
I was going to comment the same thing. This has been a Korean thing for years. They think the straight eyebrow makes you look younger because it’s how your eyebrows looked naturally when you were a child. I was trying to copy the makeup looks from the K-dramas and that was the first thing I found. They use powder to fill in the brows, edges with pencil. But they don’t shave off the ends. Those won’t come back for a lot of people.
it’s amazing to me that people have enough brow hair to “choose” anything
I know! I feel the same way!
Yeah, it doesn’t make your eyes look bigger. Just a trend like any other. I remember really wishing I had straight brows when I was a teenager because I thought they looked cool, but I have a high natural arch and naturally thin brows. I love them these days.
Not shaving off one bit of my brows. I Drew Barrymore’d them in the 90s and they never quite came back right. Me and what’s left of my eyebrows are gonna sit this one out…
Wait until peri-menopause, your brows will naturally do this.
I was going to post the same, mine are both losing the tail anyway lol
Get your thyroid levels checked, as this can happen in hypothyroidism (with cold intolerance and dry skin, weight gain or difficulty with weight loss, et al).
Haha, my old woman thinning brows have lost their tails, I guess I am on trend.
Younger women, I have just one piece of advice to give: Don’t mess with your eyebrows. Learn from my overplucked-because-of-fleeting-fashion-trend self.
My brows are too specific to my face shape. Trend or no trend, any other eyebrow shape I’ve tried has looked god awful on my face. I’ll keep my fluffy, arched brows as they are.
Ugh, I literally just got mine microbladed to even them out from the mistakes I made in the 90s/00s. She did do less of a tail though this time. Oh well, I think I’d look silly with straight brows.
No. The only women I’ve ever seen wear this look are all Karen’s. I see those brows I got her other way lol
Everyone’s face is different and I think sticking to the natural brow shape you already have is best. I’ve tried different brow shapes and I look silly. I have slightly arched brows that have thinned out at the ends now that I’m (GASP) 70 but I use a Liaison serum product on my brows and lashes that has been a miracle. All I have to do now is brush a bit of brow pencil on the outside 1/3 and they look fine.
I’m solidly GenX with hypothyroidism and my brows are pretty bushy still *knock on wood*. I think waxing one’s brows is actually worse than plucking them as far as brow retention goes. I didn’t have much to pluck though, so ymmv, and what I have plucked was my wannabe unibrow.
There are serums worth trying and not all of them are super expensive.
Ugh. Boomer here who tweezed my naturally thick brows into thin ones in the mid to late 70’s. My teen granddaughters think my grade 11 yearbook photo is hilarious. Luckily my brows grew back. I did tweeze & groom them a bit in the 90’s and aughts but the last 10 years or so I have to tint them. My hair has a few greys but my lashes & brows are nearly all white.