The shocking, unrelenting beauty craze has dug its heels into yet another red carpet season. Did the 1990s teach us nothing?
On Sunday night, Madonna found herself in the middle of yet another heated argument—a location she might as well consider her home after decades as the contentious, boundary-pushing Queen of Pop.
At the 65th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, the singer made an on-stage appearance to introduce the now Grammy-winning pair Sam Smith and Kim Petras for their performance of “Unholy.” Madonna asked the audience, “Are you ready for a little controversy?” yet the audience (both in the arena and online) wasn’t phased by anything she said. Instead, Madonna’s “unrecognizable” face—which simply appeared newly pumped with filler and lacking a few typical features—left the internet “perplexed.”
I’d argue that Madonna’s recently bleached and/or absent brows (and less so the apparent facial modifications) are the real conversation piece in this case because we’ve already gone round and round on the “aging gracefully” carousel and, to be honest, worrying about the appearance of middle-aged women in Hollywood continues to be a pointless pastime.
Madonna seems to have joined the receding eyebrow fad, which is a dramatic contrast to the thick brow revival this nation has seen since egregiously over plucking our eyebrows in the 1990s. Everyone has tried the otherworldly look, whether it be Doja Cat, Lizzo, Julia Fox, the Kardashians, the Hadids, or by bleaching their brows to give them an extended, alien-like forehead (one of the most recent offenders is the beloved JVN). Thin eyebrow filters were made accessible on TikTok in conjunction with the Y2K resurgence, and young and LGBT people started creating thinly-lined brows in the style of Pam Anderson from the 1990s. Hollywood’s shrinking eyebrow plague is a rejection of that same ideal brow, much as Anastasia of Beverly Hills and Instagram influencer fame’s perfectly coiffed bushy brows were a reaction to the over-plucking of the 1990s.
Thin eyebrow filters were made accessible on TikTok in conjunction with the Y2K resurgence, and young and LGBT people started creating thinly-lined brows in the style of Pam Anderson from the 1990s. Hollywood’s shrinking eyebrow plague is a rejection of that same ideal brow, much as Anastasia of Beverly Hills and Instagram influencer fame’s perfectly coiffed bushy brows were a reaction to the over-plucking of the 1990s.
Trend cycles move swiftly, thus it is…surprising that this startling look hasn’t already dug its own grave. Madonna has a reputation for hanging around—from vaginal NFTs to twerking party nights with club rats half her age—so her taking on the mantle of the vanishing brows feels like a desperate attempt to remain both young and current. I would contend that having no eyebrows doesn’t look good on anyone, regardless of age, but fortunately for the “Like a Virgin” singer, she couldn’t give a fig what I think.