An Expert Explains The Instagram Brow Trend

If there's one trend that's been taking the beauty world by storm the past several years, it's eyebrows. Shaping them, tinting them, filling them in — you name it, and people have done it. Having defined, polished-looking brows has become de rigueur in the beauty world, and I for one am a major fan of this trend. So when I went to a brow tinting appointment last week and my aesthetician mentioned the popularity of a trend called the "Instagram brow," I had to find out more. What exactly are Instagram brows, and should I have them?

I turned to Jared Bailey, Benefit Cosmetics's Global Brow Expert, to fill me in on this trend and give me the lowdown on whether I needed to switch up my brow shape. "Instagram brows stole the show in late 2014 as more and more make up tutorials started taking over Instagram," Bailey says. "The technique is an over dramatized fade where the brow is significantly lighter in the front then gets deeper in color as you move throughout the brow to the end."

The effect is a brow that looks soft at the beginning and slowly begins to get more defined towards the end of your brow. I turned to Instagram (naturally) to see how this trend looks in real life.

Makeup superstar Laura Lee hashtagged #Instagrambrows on this video tutorial, and as you can see, her brows are a great example of the trend. As Bailey described, they start out a little lighter towards the middle of her face and get super defined towards the end.

Nikkie of Nikkie Tutorials shows how this bold brow looks on lighter brows, and the effect is just as striking.

So what's the reason behind this whole trend? I asked Bailey if celebs like the Kardashian/Jenner family and their increasingly bold eyebrows could be behind it. I mean, just look at Kylie Jenner's bold brows in this recent Instagram post.

"Celebrities are always aspirational when it comes to beauty trends — it’s easy for them, they have entire glam squads at their fingertips," Bailey says. "However, what we see most celebrities doing now is embracing a more polished version of their natural brow shape and women around the world are doing the same thing because they realize emphasizing and grooming to their natural brow shape really brings over balance and proportion to their face and eyes."

Well, when a trend looks this good, I'm convinced. Call them what you want, but Instagram brows look like they're here to stay.

Image: Laura Lee/YouTube