I Tried Halo Brows In Real Life And I Couldn’t Bring Myself To Leave The Bathroom

When it comes to weird eyebrow trends, the internet just can't seem to quit. In the post-feather, barbed wire, and squiggle brow era, the latest out-there look to hit Instagram is halo brows, which is somehow strange and beautiful all at once.

For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of seeing them on their feeds, halo brows are basically a reverse unibrow. They were created by beauty blogger Hannah Lyne, and involve covering the outer half of your real brows with concealer and drawing a “halo” to connect them in the middle of your forehead. It realistically isn't one of those things that you'd ever want to wear in public, but there's something artsy, cool, and different about it. And as someone who once voluntarily tried nostril hair extensions, who am I to judge?

In middle school, I was hardcore bullied for having a unibrow (jokes on them now, though, since being called "Frida Kahlo" is a definite compliment), so the thought of doing this to myself initially gave me pause. I have never in my life wanted more eyebrows, but I'll have to admit my interest was piqued. After all, now that unibrows are cool again, maybe this is the new frontier? Plus, the internet was so divided over the initial trend, that I had to see for myself what the whole thing was really all about.

It was clear almost immediately that this whole halo brows thing was not going to be an easy undertaking. I have very, very dark natural eyebrows, so hiding them with concealer wound up being far more difficult than I expected. I used Maybelline’s Dream Brightening Creamy Concealer, which usually works wonders on my zits, but wasn’t as promising when it came to covering my caterpillars. After approximately 1,000 coats, the dark hair was sort of masked, but because there was so much concealer on them they were at least four shades darker than my regular skin tone. Sigh.

Next, it was time to draw the halo, which was once again a lot harder than I expected. I initially tried to do it using Edward Bess’s Fully Defined Eyebrow Duo, but it wasn’t going on thickly enough to match my natural brows. So, I turned to my all-time-favorite palette, the Huda Beauty Rose Gold Palette, that has never, ever let me down in a pinch. Using a thick eyeshadow brush, I blended Coco (a deep brown) and Black Truffle (a matte black) to get a brown deep enough to match my real brows. I started from the center of my eyebrows and slowly worked my way out, doing a little bit on each side at a time.

This may not have been the smartest way to go about the process, because my halo looked a little bit wonky and lopsided, which reminded me a lot of all the times I got yelled at in middle school art class for not being able to draw a circle.

While I was snapping mirror selfies, my mom came into the bathroom and stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of me.

"What is on your face?" she asked. "It kind of looks like your eyebrows are in a halo."

I took this to mean that I had done an amazing job at replicating the trend, despite the fact that my halo looked like it had been stepped on, squished, and not at all angelic. After thanking her for the immense compliment on my artwork, I showed her the original halo brows photo on Instagram to explain to her what I was trying to do. She immediately told me I was doing it wrong, and grabbed the eyebrow pencil out of my hand and started to decorate my eyeshadow brows with teeny, tiny, drawn on hairs. It reminded me of the times she used to pluck my unibrow when I was 12, but in reverse. Thanks, mom!

After her beautiful handiwork, I was officially done. I looked gorgeous!

... Just kidding. But I admittedly didn't look as out-there as I'd expected I would when I decided to take this trend for a spin. Compared to the nostril hair extensions, this was actually (kind of) flattering.

While I personally could not bring myself to wear the #look out of the house (despite convincing my mom that I was going to be rocking them to a fancy dinner that night, which was hilarious), I wouldn't be surprised if they popped up on a runway next season or in some artsy editorial. In a post-squiggle brow world, anything can happen.

At the very least, sixth grade me is really, really proud for voluntarily giving myself bigger brows.