London - Every morning, Isabella scrutinizes her eyebrows. In between fortnightly shaping appointments, she is careful to tweeze away stray hairs.
A ritual now as instinctive — and important — as brushing her teeth.
After all, she knows that impeccably sculpted brows not only frame her face but open her sea green eyes and ensure she’s as groomed as her highly polished peers.
You may imagine Isabella is a glamorous 30-something with a high-flying career and glossy image to maintain. She is in fact an 11-year-old primary school pupil who has been religiously taming her supposed ‘monobrow’ for a year.
Welcome to the world of the ever more self-conscious, ultra preened ‘tweens’ (pre-teens) and teenagers. The so-called ‘selfie generation’ for whom looking picture perfect is anobsession.
Not so long ago the humble brow was an afterthought in the beauty stakes, but these days – thanks to celebrities such as model Cara Delevingne, with her trademark lustrous ‘super brow’ — unkempt arches are now as big a no-no as acne or crooked teeth.
Women are threading, waxing and even undergoing hair transplants to achieve the desired look.
Isabella’s mom, Kim insits that Isabella ‘isn’t vain’, just incredibly self conscious: ‘She started pestering me after girls at school told her she was hairy and had a ‘monobrow’.
Isabella was already self conscious about the hairs on her legs. She said she’d been teased at school and had used my razor to shave all the hair off her legs and forearms. I felt sad but the last thing you want is your child to bebullied.
‘I was still playing with dolls at Isabella’s age, I didn’t shave my legs until I was 14 or pluck my eyebrows until my late teens. Pressures are so much greater now.
‘Like her friends, she’s on Snapchat and Instagram where they scrutinise one another’s looks.
‘We have noticed double the amount of young girls having their brows done in our salons this year compared to previous years,’ says brow expert Shavata Singh, who boasts a celebrity client list including Elle Macpherson and Jade Jagger.
‘Often it’s mothers who bring their daughters in as they don’t want them to make the same mistakes they did when they were younger, such as over plucking.’
Mothers blame social media for their daughters’ preoccupation with their looks. Brows are more important than nails as it’s your face most people look at on social media.
Some pre-teen girls won’t even nip to the supermarket unless their brows are immaculate - a sentiment that may well raise more than a few perfectly plucked eyebrows.
Daily Mail