Meet Sophia Hadjipanteli, model and social media influencer with over 316k Instagram followers. Sophia is also the founder of the #UnibrowMovement which encourages women to ditch the tweezers and embrace the natural brow.
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In a recent interview with Good Morning Britain Sophia discussed her unconventional look. Piers Morgan kicks off the conversation by describing Sophia's look as "weirdly beguiling". Sophia replies that this is common feedback that she gets, at first people initially are shocked by her appearance, however, after a while, it grows on them (pun intended). When asked when she herself decided to ditch the tweezers and embrace her natural look, she responds by saying she has always been eccentric in how she dresses and never measures her self confidence on others perception of her. Fair play Sophia, that takes courage.
However, not everyone has been supportive of her look that defies beauty standards for women. Sophia reveals that she has received a lot of death threats from people that have been so disgusted by her look, they wished her dead. In spite of her hatred for this negative attention, she is quite understanding. She questions what makes these people think that it is so unacceptable for her to look the way she does that it provokes such a strong reaction. Sophia brings it back to the ongoing conversation of being raised in a society that not only favourites but encourages people to go down one road. Well said, Sophia.
I too have had my own eyebrow struggles over the years. As a teenager growing up in Mayo, I was once told by a boy in school that I had "a face hairier than a dog", devastating to hear as an easily influenced teenage girl. Society has embraced more diverse beauty standards since my Mayo school days when we all wore Maybelline pan stick, sketchers and USCO trousers. There's still a long way to go to move away from the society that favours one way for women making life a series of tick boxes; meet a boy, settle down, get married in a church with a pretty dress, have a mortgage, have a baby, have a white picket fence... It's exhausting.
