The first tongue twister word that one comes across while learning Portuguese is ‘sobrancelhas’, the term used to describe one’s eyebrows.
It does not have much in common with eyes or even eyelashes for that matter, which are called ‘olhos’ and ‘cílios’ (more commonly ‘pestanas’) respectively. They are simple and easy to memorise and can be put to instant use in daily conversation, but eyebrows, now, before answering any queries about them in Portugal, one has to make sure to not raise them in alarm, or crisscross them into a frown. And that is because, depending on how thick or thin one’s eyebrows are, the action can potentially frighten strangers or make them burst out in spontaneous laughter.
Women have been stressing over their brows for decades and following all kinds of fashion trends blindly. On one end of the spectrum is the bushy straggly unibrow look of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo who famously said “I am my own muse. The subject I know best. The subject I want to know better”, and went on to become an enduring feminist icon.
She rejected stereotypes and her distinctive thick and busy eyebrows became a symbol of light for women who felt dictated to or shamed by narrow social constructs around what is considered normal.
The other extreme is the barely-there eyebrows style, where the brows are worn uber thin, and the tails are given a sort of downward twist. In between come the curved arches and the straight brow. So, if there is any lesson to be learnt here, it is that beauty trends are totally unpredictable, and that everything that was once old will become new again.
Right! But then, what is eyebrow blindness and can your brows actually go blind? Well, eyebrow blindness does not mean that one cannot see how one’s brows actually look on one’s face, but it refers to the craze of chasing the latest fashion movement blindly rather than reflecting on what works best for your own features.
According to Cassandra Bankson, a medical aesthetician, eyebrow blindness is “being blind to something that is stylish but not necessarily good for one’s long-term health or attractiveness. Instead of defining beauty for ourselves or leaning into our diversity, it is wanting to become cookie-cutter images of each other. Ask yourself, am I actually choosing a specific look that makes me feel good, or just observing what the Kardashians are doing to their eyebrows and laminating them in the same way?” she says.
However, the bad news is that the beauty industry has historically always told women that the most desirable eyebrows are the ones that they don’t currently have. The eyebrow ideal has flip-flopped between thick and thin like clockwork, at the turn of pretty much every new decade. It is no wonder then that many of us fall repeatedly into the trap and get eyebrow blinded in the process.
I remember the time I sported a very fashionable thick and busy unibrow and was at a restaurant with some friends. Their small baby tried to feed me a biscuit but instead of aiming for my mouth, he kept pushing the cookie into my eyebrows. The baby’s mother apologised profusely.
“I think you need to go for threading”, my husband whispered to me.
“But my upper lip is smooth”, I protested.
“Baby thinks the moustache has shifted”, he quipped.
“To my forehead?”, I was aghast.
“Well, babies don’t lie”, my spouse laughed.
By Nickunj Malik
|| features@portugalresident.com
Nickunj Malik’s journalistic career began when she walked into the office of Khaleej Times newspaper in Dubai thirty-one years ago and got the job. Since then, her articles have appeared in various newspapers all over the world. She now resides in Portugal and is married to a banker who loves numbers more than words.
