Skinny Eyebrows Declared ‘Cultural Appropriation’
According to a piece in Marie Claire, deciding to pluck your eyebrows so that they are very thin is “problematic” and “cultural appropriation.”
The author, Krystyna Chávez, explained that she was absolutely horrified when she saw a photo of Rihanna with skinny eyebrows.
“When I saw Rihanna on the cover of British Vogue this week with a set of ultra-skinny brows, my immediate reaction was, ‘Wait, WTF?’” Chávez writes in a piece titled “I’m Latina, and I Find Rihanna’s Skinny Brows Problematic.” “Why is Rihanna wearing chola brows?”
“Considering it was highly unlikely that Rihanna had suddenly joined a gang, and seeing as the Caribbean singer wasn’t exactly raised on the streets of East L.A., my Mexican-American heart was deeply confused, and deeply annoyed,” Chávez continued.
Basically, Chávez believes that it is offensive for anyone who is not Latina to tweeze her eyebrows a lot. Why? Well, because according to Chávez, any Latina who would go with this style would be judged harshly.
“I guarantee had, say, J.Lo or Gina Rodriguez graced the cover of a magazine with pencil-thin brows, they would have been ripped apart on the Internet for looking like a girl from the hood at best, or a chola at ‘worst,’” she writes. “To most Mexican and Mexican-American women, drawn-on eyebrows are a look historically representative of a marginalized culture — my culture — and have become a Latinx street style viewed as ‘trashy’ by the rest of society.”
“That is, until Rihanna wears them,” she continues.
Interestingly enough, Chávez later goes on to essentially disprove her own point. She explains that she understands that “skinny brows were not created or exclusively owned by the Latinx community.”
“They also have roots in South African culture, in Roaring Twenties fashion, in the Harlem Renaissance community, and I’m sure they can be found in many other subsections of the world, too,” she writes.
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