The first time I got my eyebrows waxed was for my fifth grade graduation. My mom said she was my age when she first got her eyebrows done, so it felt like a familial rite of passage.
As I lay on the waxing table, anxiously anticipating how it would feel to remove the center of my thick dark unibrow, I thought to myself Beauty is pain, a phrase I heard constantly growing up. When I made my freshly waxed appearance at school, it was the first time I received praise for my looks. I had never gotten so much attention from my classmates ― let alone hear them call me “pretty.”
As a kid, I was chubby and curly-haired, and I always wanted to be the center of attention. I never considered myself beautiful. When I started getting compliments on my appearance, it reenforced an idea that our culture puts in girls’ minds: You must be hairless to be attractive.
I continued to wax, pluck and thread my eyebrows. Soon I found myself spending significant amounts of money on the latest body hair removal product, desperately trying to find one that wouldn’t irritate my skin and could handle my coarse hair. The hair on my legs and the backs of my thighs, in particular, was a huge insecurity, and making sure I didn’t miss any spots was a tedious and time-consuming process. Eventually I realized I would rather spend my time doing something other than worrying about my hair, a naturally occurring part of my body. I was sick of feeling embarrassed and overly aware of my thick dark hair, and I started to question why I felt the need to remove it.
I realized I had spent my whole life as a target ― and eventually a product ― of the marketing campaigns and beauty standards that corporations have imposed upon women. Let’s face it: The so-called “beauty industry” profits off of our insecurities by setting impossible standards. Models and entertainers are placed on pedestals as unachievable examples of what we are told we should strive to be.
The more insecure we are about our bodies ― for example, the hair on them ― the more we will spend trying to alter them. In the case of hair, this means using razors, tweezers, shaving cream, threading, waxing and laser hair removal. Hair removal is a multibillion-dollar industry, and a lot of time and money is spent making sure that we’re continuously removing our hair and buying products and services to do so.
Once I understood how this cycle worked ― and how ridiculous it was to spend so much money and free time trying to keep up with it ― I slowly started to let my body hair grow out. During this time, I was working as a barista in a small coffee shop while getting my art degree. If there’s ever a place to experiment with growing out your body hair, a coffee shop or painting studio is it. I was surrounded by other creatives, and I started to make friends with people who were not so concerned with how they were perceived by others. I felt at home and comfortable slinging coffee with other badass chicks who didn’t care for bras, makeup or the nuisance of shaving.
Not everyone in my life was as like-minded as my classmates and co-workers. By 2016, I had not shaved my armpits in a few years, and I started to care less about my leg and belly hair. My boyfriend at the time would say things in passing to me about how my legs were so hairy that they looked like a man’s. My decision to let my leg hair grow out made him question what it meant to have a girlfriend with legs as hairy as his. Honestly, I can’t blame him, given the societal expectations of women in America and the taboo surrounding female body hair. It took some time for him to come around to this idea, and while he never fully embraced my decision to be fuzzy, he eventually became used to it and dropped the comments when I expressed how much they annoyed me.
My family members have never been judgmental of my choices, but they still mades jokes about how I didn’t shave because I was “lazy.” A family friend once whispered to my mom, “She’ll eventually grow out of it.” (No pun intended.) These comments never upset me, but in hindsight, maybe they should have.
The first time I saw someone proudly rocking their bushy brows was when I discovered the model Sophia Hadjipanteli on Instagram. She was absolutely stunning, and appeared on the cover of magazines with her strong features, bleached blonde hair and an intense unibrow. I had let my body hair grow out at that time, but I was still getting my eyebrows done. After seeing Hadjipanteli, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like if I grew out my unibrow.
I casually started letting my brow stubble grow in, but frequently wore glasses or made attempts to hide it. Growing out the hair on my face seemed like a much bigger commitment ― a statement, even ― than my leg or belly hair. It was a part of my continuing process of questioning my beliefs about beauty standards and gender norms. I was now actively asking myself why I made the choices I did with my body.
I’m not sure why it was so much harder for me to find confidence in my unibrow. What started as a kind of experiment for myself turned into a real fondness for the hair I’d been removing for most of my life. To be honest, in my day-to-day life, no one really made a big deal out of what I was doing with my hair. Sure, there were a few stares here and there, but nothing intense. I had no idea that my hair would soon become the reason millions of people knew who I was.
I downloaded TikTok, like so many other people, during the pandemic in 2020, due to boredom and in hopes of feeling more connected to others. My social media presence at that time was small ― around 1,500 Instagram followers ― but I was happy with the nice little community I’d created of similar-thinking and supportive people. When I started posting on TikTok, I was doing it simply for my own entertainment. The first video I filmed was a dance that I spent the entire day memorizing to get my mind off of COVID and recently being laid off from my job.
I never had any intention of racking up views, but I was having fun making silly videos. As I continued to post, people started to notice that I didn’t pluck my eyebrows. The more I posted, the more attention I received.
Some people praised me and thanked me for challenging beauty standards. Mothers commented on my videos to tell me their young daughters saw themselves in me. Others told me how “disgusting” and “unhygienic” I am. It was a bit shocking at first to have so many people ― most of them absolute strangers ― weighing in on my appearance, but I began to get used to it and I didn’t take it much to heart. I was still small potatoes in terms of TikTok views... until suddenly I wasn’t, when one of my videos reached 18 million views in a week.
Who knew an eight-second clip could cause so much turbulence? But it most certainly did. In the video, I lip-sync to “Woman” by Doja Cat while showing off my body hair. I wanted to make the point that even with all of my natural hair, I am still feminine. Within a few hours the video reached 1 million views.