Comb-overs and unibrows are not fashion statements consigned to the 1970s anymore, as like all trends, it. seems they are back once more and one model is blazing a trail for the latter, as she wears hers with pride and shows the world ‘her best feature’ via her TikTok videos.
Model, Kenah Jonel rocks her bushy brows, despite having been inundated with cruel comments online from trolls who call her names like "caveman" and "caterpillar". The 21-year-old from the US refuses to bow down to the abuse though and won't pluck her brows. Instead she is embracing her look - and says she hasn't taken tweezers to her striking brows since she was 16.
She’s hoping to inspire others to follow her lead and love themselves, and it seems to be working as she has started to be praised on TikTok by fans for her ‘perfect’ and ‘incredible’ brows.
But with the good has also come a lot of bad.
"I've had a lot of people say really horrible things, to the point where I've sometimes wondered how deeply that hatred is rooted in terms of the projection in correlation to my unibrow," she said.
"People call it a 'caterpillar' a lot on the internet.
"I've had men send me DMs that are basically like 'you're a monkey', 'you should kill yourself', 'you look like a neolithic caveman'.
"There are some comments that just make me sad and not because of my eyebrows but it's clearly a reflection of misogyny and that's upsetting to me, other than that, it is what it is.
"Most of the negative comments come from men.
"I do get a fair share of negative comments from women also but anyone who's ever taken their time to DM a really vile horrible message, it's almost always a man or an account that you don't really see somebody behind."
Kenah, from Austin, Texas, says if she can inspire others to be true to themselves and not subscribe to certain ‘beauty standards’ then it's all worth it.
"Be someone that 'you're proud of, happy with and think is beautiful," she said.
"I absolutely feel my most confident with a unibrow and think that I wouldn't feel comfortable looking at my face if I trimmed or plucked it.
"I also tell myself too, if I wouldn't take their [troll's] advice in real life, why would I let them tell me what to do on the internet? If I saw that person in person and they said 'I hate your eyebrows', I'd be like 'ok' and that's it.
"I think that giving people the power to decide how I want to look, dress and present myself in day-to-day life is not going to give me results that make me happy.
"And so even though people are taking time to be mean to me on the internet, and this sounds mean, but I don't care about their opinion.
"So why would I change my life in order to make them happy?"
She continued: "I've always had bushy eyebrows. But growing up I remember specifically having really hairy eyebrows and a unibrow. So my mum would always pluck them. Since I got older she didn't really have to do that anymore, I thought I liked them and I didn't feel like it was necessary for me to pluck them just because that's what everybody else did.
"So it wasn't initially supposed to be a statement or I wasn't specifically thinking 'I want a unibrow' it was more that I liked my eyebrows how they were and wanted to leave them that way. My entire life I've been told that I have incredible eyebrows, that they're perfect and that everybody loves them."
The TikToker’s recent videos have attracted thousands of views and comments. Some of the comments describe how her self-confidence has inspired them to be more confidents in themselves.
She added: "It's not really about the unibrow, it's about encouraging other people to not feel like they have to fit the status quo, whether or not that's their eyebrows.
"Sometimes, specific comments like that where people tell me that it was encouraging for them, it uplifted them and my platform means a lot to them, are special to me. They make me feel like I'm doing something right - in terms of me being myself is encouraging other people to be themselves. And I think that at the end of the day, that's all you really can do and that's the point.
"It's to break outside of that box and make other people feel more comfortable being themselves."
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