Miley Cyrus' Bleached Brows: Two Horsemen of Fashion's Browpocalypse?

If you’ve ever had a conversation with me that wasn’t about feminism or one of the many illustrious television shows that runs on ABC Family, it’s likely that we covered my only other topic of interest: eyebrows. There is nothing in this world I love like a good set of brows. While I’ve never asked anyone to lightly stroke my eyebrows during sexual intercourse, I would certainly not be opposed to it. And, until today, I labored under the beautiful delusion that the world and I were united in this great love — remember when Cara Delevingne ruined the tweezer industry (dabs a wistful tear from that weird sight-orb that sits beneath the true window to the soul)?

Anyway — just yesterday when I was reading through the celebrity-trash the clogs the arteries of the Internet, as is my wont, I came across something startling. It was a picture of Miley Cyrus with no eyebrows. I screamed a very guttural scream alone in my bed.

As I looked upon the seemingly all-bald visage, now marked only by a set of closed eyes and an unusually long and bendy tongue, I had to ask myself some dark questions. What is a human without a set of eyebrows — without brows, aren’t we all just thinking reeds with wigs on top of them? Where do eyebrows go when they die? And, most harrowingly, Will This Become A Trend? I reflected back to fashion week — how many lost, browless faces did I see on the runway? No brows at Alexander McQueen. A pronounced lack at Marc Jacobs. Miuccia Prada and eyebrows were clearly beefin’, because there were none in sight at the Prada OR the Miu Miu shows. Big bald foreheads at Yohji Yamamoto. Experimental browlessness at Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, and Gareth Pugh. Ok, the gold brows at Dior I can get behind — but not when they are part of this sinister turning tide. Not today, Raf Simons. Not today.

And I get it, really, I do — it’s your body, you will conceptually bleach off your eyebrows if you want to; “my eyebrows, my choice,” etc. But eyebrows haven’t even had their full day in the sun yet (likely they flew too close, Icarus-like, and were singed off by the force of their own hubris). Let us not permit the cruel and capricious gods of trend to pluck the eyebrows from our trembling foreheads. I mean, ok fine, probably very few people will do this because no one looks good with bleached eyebrows except for humans who are already so attractive that they’ve got facial features to spare — they can discard their eyebrows like some kind of creepy billionaire who leaves bars of gold in an airplane bathroom. BUT NONETHELESS. If the impressionable youth of America pick this terrible idea up and run with it because it’s been endorsed by Miley Cyrus, I am going to write her the most blistering open letter in the history of the written word.