TikTok Users Are Obsessed With These Realistic Temporary Eyebrow Tattoos

August 24, 2020

I think that at this point, I can confidently state that TikTok is truly the Wild West of the beauty world. There are no rules, no pressure to conform to traditional beauty standards, and no care for trends created on other platforms. On TikTok, the general motto seems to be: Life's short, so you might as do whatever the hell you want with your hair, face, and body. Case in point? The temporary eyebrow tattoos that have been going viral in recent weeks.

I've seen a handful of highly viewed videos featuring the Godefroy MyBrows Long Lasting Eyebrow Transfers and similar products, which mimic real eyebrow hair just like microblading — but instead of going to a salon and spending hundreds, you can buy these packs of 12 temporary tattoos for $10 on Amazon. As cosmetic chemist Ginger King explains, they're made with pretty standard colorants and adhesives — nothing particularly risky going on here.

They work just like the temporary tattoos you got at the dentist's office as a kid: You lie them down on a clean and flat surface, press them down for a minute using a damp cloth, then peel the backing off to reveal. The only difference is that these eyebrow transfers are meant to last for five days.

And some TikTok users have been so keen to try them that they're shaving their own eyebrows off in order to do so. Take user Linzor (@slimtofits), for example, whose eyebrow transfer video has more than 2 million views. "You really can't put them on if you have eyebrow hairs; you need to have a blank space," she says in her TikTok. "And fuck eyebrows, anyway."

As Linzor tells Allure, she adored the results of these eyebrows transfers. "I loved them. [They] looked extremely real in real life as well as on camera," she says. "I had them on for almost three days and slept with them." The way she puts it, shaving her own brow hair off wasn't a bad idea at all. She had no trouble getting her face wet, but sweat and oil did dissolve them a little, she explains.

If you're going to take a page from Linzor's book and shave your brows before applying these suckers, be careful of the techniques and products you use to do so. Connecticut-based board-certified dermatologist Mona Gohara previously told Allure that it's best to use shaving cream and a single- or two-blade razor to shave the brows.

And be sure to shave with the grain rather than against it, otherwise, you might experience razor rash — which can lead to other long-term consequences. "If you get razor bumps and inflammation repeatedly, you could theoretically get scarring of the follicle and a form of thinning of the hair," she previously explained to Allure.