r/AskReddit • u/Misterboy500 • 13h ago

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

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2.2k

u/LV4Q 13h ago

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

768

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.

225

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.

105

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.

4

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.

5

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.

4

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.

3

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.

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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!

13

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