I had an interesting conversation this morning about men and eyebrow threading. For those that don’t know about threading, in a nutshell, it’s a process in which your eyebrows are shaped up with a twisted cotton thread (ouch). It seems that eyebrow threading, for men, is catching on and it got me thinking about something…
A few years back, while conducting business in Belize, I was awake to a 7.0+ earthquake (the picture you see is in Belize the night before the earthquake). As with most earthquakes, our first instinct is often not safety, but confirmation. We required validation even in the face of such a violate- natural disaster. It’s why we all clap when one person claps upon a safe landing, it why we stand and give an ovation at the end of a good Broadway show—social creditability and social proof matters to us.
The current men eyebrow threading “movement” is the same…
We are not conditioned; unlike say a teenage girl, to pay attention, in such detail, to eyebrow grooming. Those men that do are doing it by choice, not conditioning. Eyebrow threading is rarely part of a boy’s upbringing (note there’s a clear distinction between hygiene grooming and threading the eyes). Those that do are trying to acquire some sort of social proof. The social proof can come in the form of fitting into a group, or trying to impress a women who tends to like men who are more on the metrosexual side, perhaps they are trying to smooth out there hardcore persona (in which case they are still trying to acquire a type of social proof). Acceptance in the form of social proof is what they are seeking.
If we accept this as truth, how much difference is there, say, to a woman who gets breast implants, or a tummy tuck? And when you’re finishing contemplating that, think about how much breast implants use to be taboo and are pretty mainstream in today’s world. And with the on-going emasculation of men (more on this in another post), I suppose it won’t be too long before men threading there eyebrows will become the norm…Get your clippers ready.
Share The Water…
Steve Amarante
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