CJ's World

I’ve fought my bushy eyebrows which meet in the middle of my nose all of my life. And now, from watching the tv series, Elementary, I know I’ve inherited from my father a syndrome, synophrys.

Learning of this prompted me to do some research. I found out eyebrows are not just a beauty fascination; they are essential to human communication and facial recognition. In fact, one study showed people could identify personalities from just the eyebrows of a face when the eyes were digitally edited out.

Historically, human beings have fixated on eyebrows, from the Egyptian pharaohs, to ancient Greeks who used minerals or soot to fashion a unibrow, to the Romans who also favored a monobrow with elaborate beauty rituals.

In our Western world, a unibrow is seen as unappealing and lacking in sophistication. However, other cultures, such as the Arabians, fusion of eyebrows is viewed as a sign of beauty, to the extent that women draw black lines to make a fake monobrow.

Personally, I am just relieved that there is another redeeming factor from all the time I am wasting watching movies and tv programs. I have become addicted to reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes books and short stories.