Amid all the beauty articles you’ll see me post every now and again, there’s one topic you’ll never see me cover: eyebrows. You know why? Because I, unlike so many girls and young women my age, have never and will never pluck my eyebrows to shape them. It’s just a part of the typical female beauty routine that I have never adopted.

In thinking about this issue, I realized there was a little more to it than just not liking to pluck eyebrow hairs out. It has more to do with my philosophy of beauty, which is vastly different from the beauty industry’s philosophy of beauty (not to mention society at large). Read on, to find out how a simple pair of eyebrows could make such an elegant point.

How My Brows Actually Look

As evidence of my unplucked eyebrows, I have a few pictures of myself, with no makeup and no retouching:

Barring the fact that you can tell I haven’t slept right in several years days (LOL), my eyebrows are thick and nearly-black, going almost straight across rather than having the thin, graceful arched shape so coveted in the beauty industry over the last several decades.

Every eyebrow article I read subtly tells me that I, too, should want those perfectly groomed and plucked brows for my own face. It’s almost like your face isn’t “feminine” enough without plucking these hairs out of your face every week, or having them waxed off every few months. But I just haven’t done so. Being as squeamish about pain as I am, it seems ludicrous to inflict such pinching pain on myself for a goal that I’m not even interested in.

Now, why would I not be interested in such a beauty goal? Because when my eyebrows are taken in context with the rest of my face, as seen below without glasses and with glasses…

…they actually look pretty normal, fairly well-scaled to the rest of my facial features. True, they’re thick and straight, and some kids I went to school with used to pick on me for having “guybrows,” but they do what God intended them to–namely, to keep sweat out of my eyes (which is very handy during Zumba).

The Eyebrow Epiphany

I used to think about “getting my brows done” (as it’s usually called), but I don’t anymore. And I think this whole eyebrows thing has led me to an epiphany about beauty:

Beauty is not for other people, but for the self.

If you think about it, it’s true. Each of us are the only ones who know what that makeup product feels like on our faces, what those false lashes feel like when they’re glued to our eyelids, how much those eyebrow hair roots can hurt when they’re plucked out with tweezers. Isn’t it, then, up to us which products we use and which beauty routines we do, rather than depending on someone else to tell us “what we SHOULD be using” and “what we SHOULD be doing?”

And yet, the beauty industry–and modern society as well–does not think that way. In most people’s eyes, beauty products and routines are used to visually impact other people, not to make ourselves happier…in effect, saying that our outward beauty is solely for the visual consumption of others.

I don’t buy into that line of thinking anymore; I’ve had my turn trying to “fit in with the crowd,” beauty-wise, and I just don’t. I would rather spend my time using products and doing routines that make ME feel good about ME. Thus, why I’ve never touched my eyebrows with a tweezer, but instead use hand softeners, scrubs, and lotions to make my hands feel baby-soft after a good workout.

People might even judge me through this blog post, thinking “Why would you ever let yourself look that ugly?” or “You ought to shape your brows, you’d look so much better,” but neither opinion really matters. After all, they’re my brows on my face–if some folks don’t like them, that’s perfectly okay, because my brows are not on their faces and they don’t have to live with them. My beauty routine is for me and me alone, and I think more girls and women have a right to think that way as well.

I’m not saying that we all throw down our tweezers and stomp ’em–if you love to keep your brows groomed and plucked because it makes you feel better, then that’s awesome; keep doing it. But if you’re clinging to old beauty routines and products just because some expert said you ought to or because your friends all do it, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate your beauty thinking and start doing only the things that make you the happiest about your appearance. After all, it’s your appearance–if others don’t like it, they ain’t got to live with it!