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Eyebrows are a fascinating feature — they can impact everything from the shape of your face to the demeanor you convey. They have also evolved throughout time, transcending from a mere beauty trend to having more significant and symbolic meanings. Over the past decade, we’ve seen certain eyebrow styles come and go, from the boy brow to soap brows to the dramatic Instagram ombré. In recent years, skinny brows, popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, have shown up on models and celebrities like Bella Hadid, Gabbriette, and Doja Cat. But thin brows aren’t the same type of ‘90s artifact as body glitter, Tamagotchis, or Lisa Frank stationery. They hold a powerful history, one that has strong ties to Chicana culture and the Mexican-American community of Southern California.
If you were around in the ‘90s and early 2000s and had access to a pair of tweezers, chances are you endured the skinny brow phenomenon. The thin, defined look was everywhere, on stars like Gwen Stefani, Kate Moss, and, famously, Drew Barrymore, who was “best friends with her tweezers” back then. “I lived through the height of their popularity,” says founder of Anastasia Beverly Hills and renowned “Eyebrow Queen,” Anastasia Soare. “My brows were so thin, and I had rounded arches. I look back on photos of myself, and it’s no wonder why I seem perpetually surprised.” But skinny brows weren’t born out of thin air, nor did a celebrity like Barrymore invent the look. Chicana beauty standards, specifically originating from Chola culture, have played a key role in shaping and influencing the trajectory of the skinny brow, which has since been resurrected in the modern-day trend cycle.
The Origin Of Skinny Brows
Thin, arched eyebrows are mostly known for having a history rooted in cinema, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, to be exact. Stars from the 1920s and 1930s, like Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Anna Mae Wong, Carole Lombard, and Jean Harlow, were the definition of glamour with their sharply plucked, pencil-thin brows. “The 1920s was the era of silent films, and as a result, thin brows grew in popularity,” explains Autumn Estelle Reid, the US National Global Brow and Beauty Authority for Benefit Cosmetics. “The brows were often removed and then heavily re-penciled in as thin, dark, downturned lines as they played a big role in portraying the emotions and expressions on the big screen, assisting in depicting deep thinking or heavy feeling.” This look became synonymous with femininity and sophistication, influencing beauty trends then. But the look goes back even further. Soare explains, “Thin brows have popped up as fashionable throughout time, including in the Middle Ages when some European women plucked their brows almost out of existence to emphasize their foreheads.”
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Chicana Culture’s Influence On The Thin Brow Trend
After Hollywood’s Golden Age, fuller brows came into vogue for the most part (aside from a brief resurgence in the 1970s, thanks to the ‘20s and ‘30s-inspired London fashion label Biba). Cut to the 1960s and 1970s, when young Chicana women in Southern California began developing a style of dress that would eventually become known as modern-day “chola style,” marked by dark lip liner, gold hoop earrings, nameplate necklaces, and thin, sharply arched eyebrows. Paired with Dickies work pants and cropped tank tops, chola style was a blend of traditional femininity with edgy and defiant street style. This was not simply an aesthetic, nor was it always emblematic of gang association. Chola culture draws significant inspiration from the Pachuca movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Pachucas (and pachucos) were young Mexican-Americans who embraced a powerfully self-expressive form of dress as a response to the struggles and hardships they faced in the U.S., from intense racial discrimination to cultural assimilation. Like the pachucas before them, cholas carved out a space for themselves in a society that often dismissed or vilified them. Skinny brows are bold and unmistakable, which, in a way, helped these women push back against the same beauty standards that marginalized them. (Little did they know they’d later help shape mainstream beauty trends.)
In the 1990s, skinny brows and other Chicana beauty signifiers, like dark lip liner, acrylic nails, and winged eyeliner, made their way into the mainstream. After legendary makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin began furiously plucking out the brows of every model who sat in his chair, he turned skinny brows into high fashion. Kate Moss recalled Aucoin “pinning her down” and plucking out all of her eyebrows in the documentary “Larger Than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story.” The trend continued through the early 2000s, with stars like Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé, and Paris Hilton devoted to the tweeze.
“Both flapper makeup and ‘90s Latina makeup deserve credit for the trend,” says Regina Merson, founder of the makeup brand Reina Rebelde. “In the ‘90s, the ‘chola brow’ was almost always paired with a heavy lip liner look and very tight hairstyles, both of which certainly complemented the definition of the lips in this way. It is not the eyebrow for the no-makeup makeup look.” When a beauty trend like skinny brows becomes woven into a certain time period or even associated with a famous icon, the culture from which it came can go uncredited. For instance, when Hailey Bieber wore lip liner and lip gloss in 2022, it was quickly dubbed the “brownie glazed lips trend,” although the look originated with Brown and Black women. (Even the black rubber bracelets that Madonna was known for in the 1980s were born out of chola style.)
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis Entertainment/Getty Images
The Modern-Day Skinny Brow Revival
Though the beauty industry shifted towards fuller, bushier brows in the 2010s, skinny brows have experienced somewhat of a modern revival. Zendaya, Rihanna, and Doja Cat have all worn them, while it’s a part of model and food influencer Gabbriette’s signature Latina goth look. Tiktokers and beauty influencers have also helped reignite the style, though there are lifelong skinny brow devotees out there who never strayed, including Pamela Anderson. Reid says that today’s skinny brow is more of a modern approach to the one we remember from the ‘90s in that it’s denser throughout the brow instead of completely sparse.
As to whether or not the skinny brow will become the beauty status quo, Merson believes it can only happen if everyone goes all in. “When you see Zendaya and Bella Hadid, their arch is paired with very strong makeup or defined ‘90s hair and big jewelry,” she says. Whether or not it goes mainstream again, she says, will depend on whether people want to put in the work for the whole look since it’s not for everybody. A dramatic skinny brow can be a commitment, after all. (A lesson that was learned by those of us whose brows still never fully recovered.)
Even if skinny brows are generally considered part of ‘90s and Y2K beauty trends, they will always be deeply connected to Chicana women, representing their identity, resilience, and strength. From chola culture to celebrity and fashion industry influence, these women have no doubt helped shape this iconic look, making it a powerful symbol of their self-expression, community, and cultural pride for generations.
