It is my belief that every year has its beauty trend, and eyebrows were the 2017 hit. When it came to eyebrows this past year it surely was a category with some ‘insane’ trends. Years back eyebrows were simply trimmed to keep their natural shape or shaped in the way people believed framed their face the best, but that became a thing of the past. As of last year, more and more people went against a simple and common brow look and instead went for something that was more attention grabbing.

Truly 2017 was a momentous year for anything eyebrow related. Businesses were booming from the selling of eyebrow products like pomades, pencils, gels, and powder among other things. As well as those companies that were dedicated to giving the customer their desired eyebrow look like those who do microblading, waxing and threading. Although microblading became a ‘thing’ long ago, it became quite popular as of August last year, becoming a top spa trend. This technique is used to fully or partially camouflage missing eyebrow hair. That was one of the simpler trends. On the other hand, with 2016 out the window, so were the famous Instagram brows, and through the door came eyebrows like the ‘carved’ brow, the wavy brows, braided brow, rainbow brow, feathered brow, and the lightning bolt brow among many others that could only be imagined.

Let’s talk about the carved brow that in 2016 had a whole different meaning than it did in the past year. In 2016 you could say “wow your eyebrows look carved today”, meaning they had concealer all around them. In 2015, a carved brow meant your eyebrows only had hair that was on the brow shape and not extra hair that made them bushy. Now, a carved brow is a line around the outer perimeter of the eyebrow, then eyeshadow blended around it to create a smoky effect. This trend began with a makeup artist on IG by the name of Alexa Link.
 Wavy brows started off from beauty blogger Promise Tamang. These brows seemed to be the most imitated and popularized of the year. According to Tamang, she saw a photo shopped image of squiggly brows and decided to recreate the look using PVA glue to flatten all her brow hairs to one direction and then following with concealer and powder to cover the brow. She then proceeded to create the actual shape with a black eyeliner mixed with pomade. As we have seen, all these eyebrow trends go viral from Instagram makeup artists, and this time was no exception.
       

Braided brows went viral after Eros Gomez uploaded a picture of his brows in a neat braid. Gomez claims to have spent “almost an hour using things like hair gel and spirit gum” in the efforts of braiding his eyebrows. He then says that once he knew it wasn’t going to work, he just made an edit with a braid over his brow. Eros’s followers tried the look as well, but not all of them would just edit a braid onto their brow. A big part of his followers drew on braids with a brow pencil or pomade.
     

An intriguing trend that also popped up was the rainbow eyebrow, that differs from how the rest became popular. This trend rose from a company called ‘Winky Lux’. A cosmetic company made a color pallet with five primary colors consisting of blue, pink, red, yellow, and light brown. The company claims they made this eyebrow pallet to excite users. 
On the natural yet not so natural side, MUA Stella Sironen made a parting in between her eyebrow, separating it with glue, an effect resembling barbs diverging along a quill. Although Sironen posted the picture she does give credit to her friend Leevi for “dreaming up the avian look”. Instagram MUA’s just can’t stop starting up beauty trends. Makeup artist Zakia Wahbia shaped her brown into lightning bolts and uploaded the picture again on Instagram in late September. she created this look by using a dip brow pomade and gel eyeliner.
 

In short, eyebrows managed to be a big part of a year in its creative and unique ways all through social media, primarily Instagram. As we can see people care less and less about how society wants their eyebrows to look for them to be ideal in framing their face. We can also see how eyebrows no longer change through years but now as little as a few weeks to a few months depending on how ‘warble’ the look is.