A 31-year-old woman named Eldina Jaganjac refuses to shave or pluck off her mustache and unibrow. Although most men find her facial hair to be a turn-off, Eldina believes that by leaving her unibrow and mustache in place, she can “weed out” potential love interests because she wants to find someone who loves her for the woman she is – not because her face is clear of facial hair.
Eldina works as a tutor in her home city of Copenhagen, Denmark. She revealed that many men, especially younger ones who are teenagers, stare at her facial hair like she has a “third head,” she actually gets more attention from people than she did before she shaved off her excessive facial hair. And that’s the way she likes it because she wants to find a lover who appreciates her for who she is – not because she fits with societal beauty standards.
Although she has facial hair, Eldina does not feel it makes her less feminine. Instead, she sees her unibrow and mustache as something that helps her stand out from the crowd and makes her unique from other women in Denmark.
Eldina said: “Before I let my unibrow grow out, I did feel like there were extremely limited options to how women were supposed to look. Compared to men, we are expected to spend much more time and money on our looks just to be deemed visually acceptable in society, especially when you are in public spaces.”
She added, “If a man doesn’t shave and doesn’t pluck his eyebrows, no one notices or comments, and it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Just like many other women, I have learned to police myself. For instance, I used to not feel comfortable going outside unless my eyebrows were the accepted small size, and I wouldn’t go to the gym unless my legs were cleanly shaven.”
When the pandemic started in March 2020, Eldina decided to just be herself. She stopped plucking the hair between her eyebrows and stopped waxing her upper lip. She now loves her unique look because it makes her stand out from all the other women out there who have normal levels of facial hair.
She said, “Now, I’ve chosen to focus on the tasks and goals that I need to have done and less on how I appear while doing them and whether people like me or not because I probably won’t ever see them again and if I do, I still don’t care. I don’t care what people think. I don’t want it to become this big thing – no pun intended – but it’s a personal choice for everyone to make themselves, and I wish that people wouldn’t care no matter how a woman chooses to look.”
Although she is happy with her look, she still faces societal pressure, especially from young men.
“I have had a few teenage boys yell at me in the streets, but nothing big. I think it’s hard to understand gender roles when you are a teenager and you are growing up, so I think seeing a woman doing something that is considered less feminine confuses these teenagers, and they let it out on me because they start to question their own norms and understanding of what it means to be a man.”