I always had thicker brows, but it wasn't until I was a 12 that I started to worry about what I looked like. At that time, all of my friends were starting to wax and pluck their brows, which made me self-conscious about my thick ones. Friends would ask me why I didn't wax, or point out that I had a "unibrow." That made me start plucking my eyebrows, so much so that I actually shortened them by accident, and they got really thin. And then I got self-conscious that they were too thin, and it became a vicious cycle. It was pretty much rock bottom for my brows.
In my later high school years, my mom put an end to my brow grooming. She warned me that she also over-plucked her brows as a teen and they never grew back. She literally told me, "I'm not letting you touch your brows anymore. You're not going to wax, and you're not going to pluck them." I was pretty okay with this because I had started doing some modeling and agencies wanted me to leave them alone too. But they grew back in super awkwardly. At that time, there weren't a ton of good brow products on the market. I was very new to beauty, so I used this Laura Mercier brown eyeliner to fill in the sparse areas a little bit to even them out. Unfortunately, that made them way too dark, which was just another low point in my brow journey.
I don't even know exactly when it was that they fully went back to normal, but when I was 17, they just looked better, and I knew I would always leave them alone. This is about the time when my mom was wanting to start a new company after taking a break to stay home with me and my sister, Ally. She's a chemical engineer, and has a lot of experience in beauty, having started her own company. When I was 17 and Ally was 14, we were playing in her makeup, and Ally and I told her how much we loved all the pencils in natural shades. We weren't into makeup brushes and blenders and all that complicated stuff. We wanted simple, natural makeup that we could apply in under five minutes after oversleeping. We didn't want to look like different people, just better versions of ourselves.
Ally and I noticed that out of all the brands we were following on social media, none of them were beauty brands. That's because no brands really spoke to us. We didn't see any companies featuring girls with bushy brows, or really any other "flaws." I had grown to accept and even start to love my brows, but it seemed like the beauty industry just talked about being perfect and flawless. And if you didn't look like the beauty industry's definition of beautiful, then you weren't beautiful.
One of the main reasons why we decided to start NudeStix was because we wanted to empower girls to love everything about themselves. Everyone has something that they're self-conscious of. For me, it was my brows. We wanted girls to learn to embrace their features and their imperfections because that's what makes them perfect. It's what I wish I had growing up that would allow me to see girls that aren't one version of beauty. We decided on the name Nudestix because of our love for "nude" products, in pencil or stick form.
Even now that NudeStix has become successful, I still get bullied about my brows. There's just always going to be those haters. I run NudeStix's Instagram account, so when I post a photo and my brows are in the picture, people will comment,"Oh my God, ew, not brow goals," "Pluck your brows," or "Why do you have to have such ugly models?" I even get: "Do something about your brows. I can't look at your lipstick because your brows are too distracting." Even all these years later, it can be hurtful.
I try to respond in an educational way. I'll comment back and say, "Hey, I actually love my brows, and I embrace them. I believe that everyone is beautiful and everyone's unique, and everyone should just embrace their natural beauty." And that's pretty much it. I don't avoid it or make my way around it, because if people want to hate, that's their problem. At the end of the day, I want people to know that we embrace our beauty and that's empowering and something to look up to.
There's always going to be negative comments but you have to look at the positive ones. Other girls tell me that they love the brand because it makes them feel beautiful. I've received DMs saying: "I'm so happy that someone in the beauty industry is talking about natural beauty and embracing who you are." I also love that girls are inspired by the whole entrepreneurial aspect of it and hearing that they want to start their own businesses too is really exciting.
Don't get me wrong, loving yourself does not come right away.There's going to be times when you have struggles with your identity. It happens to everyone. But, it's all about baby steps. We can't love all of ourselves all at once, though I wish as girls we could, because that's the goal, right? It's all about slowly loving yourself and totally owning your perfect imperfections.
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