Beyond Fashion: Understanding the Practical Functions of Eyebrows

If you were posed with the choice between your eyeballs and your eyebrows, many women might lean towards safeguarding their eyeballs, considering that quite a few don't hold a deep attachment to their eyebrows. In fact, some opt to shave them off as part of a fashionable statement. Personally, I find it hard to prioritize one over the other, as I don't engage in eyebrow alterations. This curious trend often leaves me wondering about the motivation behind eyebrow grooming.

Eyebrows, although not as important as the eyeballs which is a major requirement for sight, the eyebrows is entirely not useless. Do you know that it is still possible to identify people in pictures with their eyes blured but it is very difficult to identify them with their eyebrows removed? Study has shown that people have difficulty recognizing people with no eyebrows compared to those missing eyeballs. According to the article "The role of eyebrows in face recognition", when eyebrows were removed in familiar faces, there was a very large and significant disruption in recognition performance.

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If you have seen the art of the Mona Lisa, you would have realized that the painting doesn't have eyebrows, and while a lot of people agreed that she is female, some people beg to differ. Either ways, the painting doesn't have eyebrows. While Apes and monkeys have their head filled with their, we humans only keep hair in very simple places eliminating the forehead completely.

A distinguishing feature of modern humans is the brow ridge, clearly observed in our skulls with smooth, elongated foreheads and agile eyebrows, in contrast to the rigid brow ridges of apes and archaic hominid skulls. Various theories suggest reasons for this, such as differences in testosterone levels between modern humans and archaic hominids, as well as the role of our expanded frontal brain lobes.

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However, eyebrows are not merely a product of evolution's pruning. They play an essential role in shielding our eyes from sweat, rain, and sunlight. Additionally, research reveals that our distinct trait, empathy, may have contributed to the development of eyebrows, given our social nature as a species. Studies indicate that eyebrows have the capacity to convey emotions, enhancing our survival prospects. Remarkably, eyebrows hold a significant role in facial expression. Alter the eyebrows on a face three times, and you'll witness three distinctly different emotional reactions or expressions.

Eyebrows have also been identified to compliment conversation especially in people who have auditory problems. The movement of the eyebrows is important in non-verbal communication, and asides from humans, we can also see this in dogs, what we call the puppy eye. It turns out that dogs with the most expressive eyebrows are likely to be adopted more than dogs with less expression.

While we will not want to lose our sight, trust me when I say it is very important, let's not forget the pivotal role played by the often-overlooked eyebrows that grace our upper eye region.

Read More

https://web.mit.edu/sinhalab/Papers/sinha_eyebrows.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6070777/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897851/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2238342/
https://www.nataliesskinsolutions.com/why-eyebrows-are-important-to-your-face/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24385129/
https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3389878_2/component/file_3389879/content