skyzeditz/InstagramJust when you thought Instagram couldn’t get any stranger, in steps the most bizarre facial adornment we’ve seen since Mike Tyson went tribal.
Enter: the latest beauty trend raising eyebrows on the world wide web. The pencil brow. Singular. Not the thin pencil-drawn brows of early nineties nightmares, but brows drawn on to look like tiny pencils.
From the touch-up artist who brought us high heel brows, here you have the latest ‘lewk’:
skyzeditz/InstagramThe eyebrow in question belongs to Huda Kattan, a 34-year-old American makeup artist, beauty blogger, and entrepreneur who founded the cosmetics line Huda Beauty.
But her eyebrow, styled to look like a lovely HB pencil, hasn’t been drawn on with her own hand.
It now has over 40,000 likes, at the time of writing, and joins the ranks of the weirdest fashion and beauty trends:
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It’s a Photoshop edit by SkyzEditz, real name Stefan Oskys, who has doctored a number of beauty bloggers’ brows to look wholly unnatural…
Because young girls aren’t subjected to enough ridiculous beauty standards already, right?!
Another ‘victim’ of this so-called fashion crime is Sudé Alkan, of London:
skyzeditz/InstagramWell, the 19-year-old digital marketing executive told UNILAD all about why she really does it.
The Photoshop wizard does the hilariously unthinkable on Khelan MH, a 21-year-old beauty and lifestyle blogger from Germany, with over 309,000 followers on Instagram.
Here’s the video tutorial if you’d like to clue up:
The professional editor, with a penchant for highlighter, told UNILAD:
Well when it came to creating this eyebrow I was just trying to be smart about it. Makeup pencils obviously play a massive part when doing your brows so why wouldn’t I combine the two to make a brow in the shape of a pencil!
As for the high heel brow, I was inspired by Apple emojis! I was scrolling through them seeing what I could potentially create and saw the high heel and thought ‘That would so trigger everyone’, let’s go with that one.
‘Funnily enough’, he adds, his work has gone further than he could’ve imagined, with bloggers recreating his designs using real make up, rather than the pixellated pigments on a computer screen.
He said:
A few people have asked me to create pencil brows onto them, which is always cool to see! But also a lot of people are trying it out themselves which I absolutely love.
Stefan explained he appreciates the support of the beauty industry, saying:
When it comes to beauty bloggers, I have had a crazy amount of support from those which I have edited.
They really love the photos which I post and a lot of them share my stuff on their pages.
Stefan even does celebrity makeovers.
His work – from the fishtail to the coat hanger by way of mermaid brows – is certainly controversial, with the Internet Jury still out.
Some think it’s ‘dope’, while other trolls think it’s a ‘ridiculous’ trend ‘too far’.
Some argue this unachievable aesthetic is a direct result of the rise and rise of the Kardashian Klan, their business forays into the beauty industry and their pedestal positions within pop culture.
Kylie herself notes the pressures of looking a certain way on social media:
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But, Stefan responds to criticism explaining there’s room for everyone:
I don’t really care about the comments on how my stuff goes against beauty standards. Editing is all about being creative and so is makeup. Who says there should be a norm?
That’s like saying there should only be one sexuality or one race, I say let people be themselves and do their own thing and take your boring mainstream culture elsewhere.
And, don’t worry guys, Stefan will make you glow too.
Hey, at least these edits have some creativity behind them – and don’t take superficial matters too seriously.
It’s got to be better than the endless Snapchat filters:
Meanwhile, the Internet Jury should probably focus their efforts elsewhere than getting triggered by some facial hair. Again.
If you have a story to tell, contact UNILAD vie [email protected].
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.