Little did model Sophia Hadjipanteli know that a beauty blunder would lead to her turning the industry on its head. Like Rihanna’s leg hair and Julia Robert’s armpit hair, this model is shunning hair removal in the name of body positivity. What began as an eyebrow tinting disaster for the 22-year-old Greek Cypriot American would become the start of a bushy brow revolution and ignite a global conversation and social media campaign about conventional beauty standards.
Cue the Unibrow Movement. The Internet age’s answer to the genre-busting Frida Kahlo brow encouraging people all over the world to reconsider their perception of beautiful. In short: it’s about embracing yourself as you are. “I choose to wear my eyebrows this way for the same reasons I styled myself in school – because the only preference that matters is my own,” she explained in an interview with Dazed. “If my childhood taught me anything, it is that I love being different.”
Notwithstanding the constant online abuse and death threats, Hadjipanteli is pressing ahead with her body-positive movement and has even given her eyebrow a nickname, “Veronika.”
“I am not really doing this to show people that they have to like [my unibrow], I am more so doing it to show people that they can get on with their lives by having a preference,” the Maryland university student said during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar.
After being inundated with requests from fans, the Cyprian model dressed up as the famously monobrowed artist Frida Kahlo in 2017. “I didn’t want it to feel like I was appropriating her at all,” she cautions. “I have always loved her and thought she was so beautiful—I remember I did a project on her back in middle school before I even had these eyebrows.”
From one Greek woman to another, you go, girl.
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