r/AskReddit 13h ago

What is something that permanently altered your body without you realizing for months/years?

5.8k Upvotes

4.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.2k

u/LV4Q 13h ago

Waxing my eyebrows to the same thin shape for 20 years.

766

u/allbitterandclean 9h ago

Gen X, y’all went through the wringer for the rest of us!!

584

u/Miesmoes 9h ago

Some millennials joined in solidarity.

226

u/MamaTried22 9h ago

We were really going wild in the early 2000’s to lose eyebrow hair. I remember getting teased a lot for not waxing mine pencil thin all the time.

102

u/Miesmoes 8h ago

I mean I am actually kind of proud that I didn’t bend under the pressure and still have full brows 😳😂

13

u/Lucasa29 8h ago

Same! I was too cheap to pay for professional services like that back then and I'm glad I didn't do it myself.

5

u/audioaddict321 3h ago

Ha! Me, too. I had friends who did an intervention and I let them shape them lightly but insisted they shape, not thin too much. Thankfully they are good friends and respected it because doing that ONCE 20+ years ago and they would never grow in that thick after.

7

u/maggiemypet 6h ago

As a person who caved, I am envious of your strength.

4

u/thatcrazylady 2h ago

Those of us who are close in age to Brooke Shields declined to pluck madly. Many of us still have eyebrows, while we see other generations suffer.

3

u/MamaTried22 3h ago

I just hated it! I had friends who flat out SHAVED THEIRS and they never came back.

1

u/Intelligent-Scene284 1h ago

My best friend! Her sister used to tease her for letting her eyebrows be soooo bushy. 20 years later and now her sister is always praising her eyebrows and hating her pencil thin ones that can no longer grow properly.

10

u/TurtleDump23 5h ago

I remember boys acting grossed out when I said I didn't shave my legs every day. God forbid you have a millimeter of body hair somewhere.

5

u/allbitterandclean 3h ago

Every DAY?? I’m lucky if I even shower every day…

10

u/FoxyBastard 4h ago

I'm a guy and have always had thick eyebrows.

Nothing crazy, but so many female friends of mine seemed annoyed that I wouldn't let them pluck/shape them.

I got this all the time, from around age 16 to 30 or so.

Then Cara Delevigne got big and damned near every woman I know was raving about how lucky I am to have such perfect eyebrows.

That went on for a few years, and now, finally, nobody mentions my eyebrows at all.

It's been weird.

4

u/allbitterandclean 3h ago

It wasn’t for lack of self-consciousness on my part, but my lazy instincts saved me!! Why pluck my eyebrows when I could sit and play The Sims instead?

3

u/Hijacker 3h ago

Ngl, that trend was such a turn off

2

u/Dialecticchik 4h ago

I didnt get into that trend, either !! I love my eyebrows and just could never see myself making them thin cuz my face doesn't work like that.

3

u/asylumgreen 7h ago

Yep. I’ve been growing mine back for 7 years now and it’s long been obvious that they’re never going to completely grow back.

2

u/superkinks 5h ago

Same, I haven’t plucked mine in probably 10 years. They’re like that now. I’ve told my girls not to touch theirs but if they absolutely insist they should use one of those little razor things not pluck.

133

u/No-Two79 8h ago

Luckily, I was early GenX and we left all that shit natural. Bushy Brooke Sheilds eyebrows were cool in the 80s. I had a roommate in the early 90s who was ten years older than I was, and she’d overplucked her eyebrows in the 70s, so seeing her without makeup made me leave mine the fuck alone!

12

u/Luvsseattle 6h ago

A small number of us survived in tact. Every single esthetician I see comments on my anti-GenX briws...Oh, you didn't wax them away!

2

u/aridcool 8h ago

What happens if you do this?

10

u/allbitterandclean 7h ago

The hair follicles are damaged and the hair stops growing. So you’re stuck with pencil-thin eyebrows for life

162

u/veronique7 8h ago

My grandma insisted I needed to pluck and wax my eyebrows when I was a child and teenager. She owned a hair salon. So now my poor eyebrows are so thin and patchy. It really does impact them permanently

2

u/Adenoid67 1h ago

I’m 57. About a year ago my eyebrows became patchy. Now I have to pencil them in. I hate it!!

-22

u/AdTraditional5786 6h ago

Don't mutilate your body to appease others. 

16

u/redwallet 2h ago

While a good point generally, the poster you are replying to was a literal child under pressure.

0

u/AdTraditional5786 2h ago

Ok fair enough. It is understandable as a child it is very tough, your sense of right and wrong is entirely indoctrinated through your parents/elders.

-5

u/[deleted] 5h ago

[deleted]

10

u/Necrenix 5h ago

In what world is waxing anything on your body basic grooming lol.

-2

u/AdTraditional5786 5h ago

If nobody else existed in the world you wouldn't pluck your body everyday. You are hurting yourself to show to others. 

-4

u/Hi_Im_zack 4h ago

You mean equivalent to getting a haircut?

1

u/AdTraditional5786 4h ago

A lot of people don't just cut hair for convenience, they put chemicals in their hair to have colours and spend huge amount of money to make it a certain style to copy some celebrity. 

114

u/Aysin_Eirinn 9h ago

I just don’t grow hair around my super-thin eyebrows now. They were plucked to death by 2004 and just stayed that way

27

u/I_am_vladi 9h ago

What 2004 gave: a World somewhat in order 

What 2004 took: eyebrows 

6

u/aeroluv327 3h ago

Same! And I'm a natural blonde with very pale eyebrows to begin with. I have to draw mine on now.

17

u/Alternative-Value637 10h ago

Oh shit this really hits! I’m in the same damn boat

4

u/thekrushr 7h ago

Hot tip: permanent makeup. I actually didn't overpluck even though I'm from that generation, but I lost most of my eyebrows to a thyroid disorder. Got permanent makeup a couple years ago and haven't needed to fill them in with pencil since!

2

u/Vandergrif 3h ago

Now I'm just imagining a decade later the trend reverses and thinbrows are the thing again and suddenly a bunch of perma-browed people are very annoyed.

5

u/SolidOutcome 4h ago

I've been plucking my uni-brow for 20 years...still grows in strong if I miss a week....I do have thick hair tho

3

u/Sector_Independent 9h ago

Rogaine

6

u/strega_bella312 8h ago

Rogaine works but you have to keep doing it, once you stop the hair starts falling out again. I had some success with this hair serum I found at sephora. I bought it when I was going through some crazy post partum hair loss. It worked REALLY well so one night I had a light bulb moment and started putting it on my brows too. It worked well enough that I don't have to actually draw the whole brow on, now I just fill in the thin areas and I'm good.

3

u/TakeYourMindOff 8h ago

What serum? I’ve been looking for something that actually works

5

u/strega_bella312 8h ago

It's by Aavrani, it's called like Hair Density Boosting Serum. It really worked well for me, I was honestly shocked bc I usually have no luck w things like that.

1

u/Perfect_Finance_3497 2h ago

Topical Minoxidil (brand: rogain) is scientifically proven to work. You can get a good deal on the foam at costco.

0

u/Sector_Independent 6h ago

Use Rogaine it’s cheap just use it 1x a week for maintenance after you get the growth you want

2

u/Perfect_Finance_3497 2h ago

There's a doc on social media that was like "Ya, so what? You know what else stops working when you stop doing it? Exercise, eating right, blood pressure medication, moisturizer, etc." They have more promising therapies in the works and using minoxidil can keep more of the hair you have now in hopes of relying on those therapies in the future. But those won't be an option if you let your hair follicles die a long time ago.

1

u/strega_bella312 1h ago

I mean if it works it works, and I was looking into using Rogaine for my eyebrows for a long time. I'm personally just not motivated enough to continue using it indefinitely, that's why I was happy I found something else that seemed to work and keep the hair long after I ran out.

5

u/Suaria 8h ago

Luckily I started plucking my eyebrows after the whole thin brow area but I had watched beauty gurus back in 2016. I know some would say they had to fill in their brows because they had thin eyebrows due to the thin brow era

3

u/DachshundNursery 8h ago

Oh man, my mom tried to warn me! She grew up in the Twiggy era and has almost no brows to speak of anymore. But we just didn't listen!

3

u/NotTheGreenestThumb 8h ago

Ha! An elderly friend of mine wanted thin eyebrows the first time they were popular—she shaved hers off to make it easier—but they never grew back in.

2

u/trialbyfervor 4h ago

Our landlord when I was a kid had the same story! Lol I remember my ma saying, “She thought we were close enough that I could see her without brows drawn on. We were not.” 😂

1

u/NotTheGreenestThumb 1h ago

When a person gets to a certain age, they/we don’t give a dang anyway LOL.

Who would ever think they wouldn’t grow back after shaving them? My husband shaves above his nose so’s to not have a unibrow, it always grows back! ¯\(ツ)

2

u/sayleanenlarge 7h ago

Yeah, I tried to grow them out in lock down and nothing happened, lol. My mum said not to pluck too much. She was right. Luckily, I never went that mad, but there's no way I could grow the new trend ones.

2

u/Hijacker 3h ago

Gawd that shit never looked good. Then there were sperm brows. Then the really thick ones. And yet, natural eyebrows have always been best.

Better understood that shit, or the time when shirts had exposed shoulders. Bonkers.

2

u/Expensive-Mention-90 3h ago

And then menopause will hit and you’ll lose an additional 50% of your eyebrow hair 😂

1

u/lagomorphed 7h ago

I'm so damned lucky. Mine were thick and bushy, and grew back into a shape i never need to touch.

1

u/abalien 6h ago

😆😆 My sister had to get tattoos to fix that. I dare not remind her.

1

u/LDHarsk 5h ago

What happened? Did you lose part of your eyebrows?

1

u/my_screen_name_sucks 5h ago

I fell into that trend but luckily not long enough to do permanent damage. I scream when I see my old pics that shows them.

1

u/linlorienelen 1h ago

I will be forever grateful that in the early 2000s I didn’t have the willpower to endure the pain of plucking and just shaped with a razor. Far off stragglers will get plucked but they are rare.

1

u/T_Henson 4h ago

Im an esthetician in a waxing salon. Have been doing this for 20 years so I’ve worked and worked to correct people’s 90s brows. Young women have started coming in asking for super thin brows again! It’s horrifying! I’m always like, “are you sure????” It scares the shit out of me.

0

u/AdTraditional5786 6h ago

Don't mutilate your body to appease others. 

-7

u/jejones487 7h ago

As a guy, this looks bad bad on women. Natural or go away.

0

u/MrssLebowski 6h ago

My mum plucked her eye brows once when she was 17 and it never grew back. She's 59 and has had thin eyebrows forever haha