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22nd Jun 2019

People outraged after mum admits she plucked her baby’s eyebrows for ‘aesthetic reasons’

Keeley Ryan

She did it while the little girl slept.

A mum has come under fire after admitting she plucked her 15-month-old daughter’s eyebrows for “aesthetic reasons”.

The woman took to Reddit’s Am I The Asshole? forum to ask for advice after her friend’s reaction to the news made her feel “insecure”.

She explained:

“I gave birth 15 months ago to a beautiful baby girl. She’s always been hairy.

“It’s nice in a way because she was born with hair on her head and she has really full eyelashes. But she’s also developed a unibrow.”

The woman added that her daughter’s hair was initially very fair, but had gradually gotten darker – which also made the unibrow more prominent.

The mum continued:

“For aesthetic reasons, I decided to pluck it while she slept. If she woke up I would stop. I managed to get it all off in a couple days.

“I didn’t really think of this as being a bad thing, but a fellow mom friend of mine stopped by for a play date a few days ago.

“She’s an extremely observant person and she mentioned my daughter’s eyebrows.

“I was honest and said I plucked the middle while she slept. She had this horrified look and said she was surprised that I did that.”

She added that her friend’s reaction made her feel “insecure” about what she had done – and she turned to Reddit in an effort to get additional opinions.

The reaction was pretty mixed, with many of the Reddit users feeling the same way that her friend had.

One person wrote:

“[What] is wrong with someone who cares about their baby’s EYEBROWS?! Way to cement those self esteem issues nice and early.”

Someone else added:

“You’re seriously applying adult beauty standards to a child- a baby in fact.

“The kids unibrows make ZERO difference to her experience as a baby, but her mom pulling out her hairs one by one because she isnt pretty enough is going to carry a lifetime of complications.”

Another person commented:

“Let your baby be a baby.

“There will be plenty of time for her to decide what beauty standards she wants to uphold and which ones she wants to buck, but there will never again be a time in her life of so little self-consciousness as now.

“There’s no need to project it onto her.”

However, others defended the mum’s decision – maintaining that it wasn’t actually a terrible thing to do.

Someone pointed out:

“Plucking doesn’t really hurt. If you were full on sculpting the brows, I’d say you were the asshole, but cleaning up a unibrow? Who cares.”

A different person said:

“She did it while her kiddo was sleeping, and  stopped if she woke up . She didn’t pin the kid down and pluck her while she screamed and struggled.”

Topics:

Parenting,Reddit