More recent research, however, points toward the notion that long eyelashes are valuable for the illusion they create of wide, gazing eyes. (Though that observation could have been based on a grain of truth: One condition that can lead to eyelash loss is syphilis.) Eyelashes are one of the few types of female body hair to make it into the “good, emphasize” category and not the “bad, eliminate” one. Eyelashes have also historically been associated with chastity - ancient Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder suggested, rather amusingly in hindsight, that women’s eyelashes could fall out if they had too much sex. For one, the presence of healthy eyelashes can be a sign of overall health several diseases, disorders, and congenital conditions can cause eyelash loss (sometimes referred to as milphosis or madarosis).
There are a few theories for why eyelashes are considered attractive or aesthetically pleasing. In 1843, the English poet Thomas Hood described the blinding beauty of the Biblical Ruth by noting her “long lashes veiled a light that had else been all too bright,” and countless other authors and lyricists in the time since have mentioned eyelashes in their descriptions of beautiful women: the batting of them, the morning-light waking flutter of them, their dewiness when implicated in the supposedly feminine act of crying. Many famous paintings of beautiful women, for example, like John Singer Sargent’s 1884 work Portrait of Madame X and several of Picasso’s paintings of his lover, the Surrealist artist Dora Maar, emphasize their subjects’ lashes.
Still, eyelashes have managed to become one of the few types of female body hair to make it into the “good, emphasize” category and not the “bad, eliminate” one - and for centuries, we’ve been imagining the presence of long, dark eyelashes to signify feminine beauty of the highest order. Some scientists believe that if eyelashes even have any real function, it’s to diffuse airflow that might threaten to dry out the eyeball, and that their length is generally determined in relation to the size of the eyeball itself rather than the gender of the mammal they belong to. Long eyelashes are in no technical or biological sense a lady thing.
When he showed his handiwork to our mother, she wept. So off those lashes went, with a few swift chops from a pair of child-sized scissors. Long and sweeping enough to brush the lenses of his sunglasses and attract compliments from old ladies, his lashes embarrassed him: Weren’t long eyelashes for girls? Didn’t they make you pretty? He was a boy. These were, by and large, things my brother knew when, at age 10, he decided to cut his own eyelashes. Similarly, the only facial difference between Disney’s incarnation of Robin Hood and his female counterpart Maid Marian was, you guessed it, her fluttery black lashes - and there’s a multimillion-dollar industry built on the (bizarre) notion that when you add eyelashes to your car, you suddenly have a lady car.
Add eyelashes to Bugs Bunny, and you’ll get Lola Bunny. The Everything Guide to Eyelashes is a week of stories on the Cut about lashes, from all the mascaras we’ve obsessively tested to our personal feelings about why eyelashes matter.Īdd a pair of eyelashes to Mickey Mouse and you’ll get Minnie Mouse. Eyelashes have the impressive ability to transform your face.
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