Doja Cat Let Go Of Beauty Standards And Shaved Her Brows On Insta

This morning I, like a lot of people online, watched the video of Doja Cat shaving her eyebrows. On Thursday, Aug. 4, the “Get Into It” singer went live on Instagram and talked candidly about how she’s always hated having hair before shaving off her eyebrows. While Twitter is buzzing over Doja Cat’s browlessness, I was more moved by what the Grammy winner had to say about hair prior to her makeover moment. Before she lathered up her forehead, Doja Cat shared some raw, vulnerable truths about hair and beauty standards. Speaking for about two minutes, she also shared a particularly gutting description of how it feels to try and work out in a wig.

Black women face intense scrutiny when it comes to hair. While people who identify as women know that beauty standards, most of them centered around whiteness, can be crushing to try to meet, Black women are specifically targeted when it comes to their hair. There’s research behind this, y’all. In 2021, Dove conducted a study that found that 86% of Black teens report experiencing hair-based discrimination by age 12. In some states, it is perfectly legal for companies to not hire, send home, or not promote people based on natural hairstyles that are deemed “unprofessional.” Expectations around what a Black woman’s hair should look like are maddening and it was so liberating to hear Doja Cat share her own experiences trying to have the right kind of hair at the expense of her happiness.

While the original video went wherever IG Lives go once an Instagram user stops filming, there are plenty of clips available on Twitter. In the video, Doja Cat spoke about her decision to go full G.I. Jane and get a buzz cut. “I feel like I was never supposed to have hair anyway,” she said. “I’ve never liked having hair. I cannot tell you one time, since the beginning of my life, that I’ve ever been like, ‘This is cool.’” In fact, Doja Cat explains that it was quite the opposite and recounts trying to complete strenuous workouts while wearing a wig.

Sweating caused moisture on her scalp to make the wig slip, slide, and become sticky. “I’m doing this incredibly strenuous thing, but I couldn’t focus because I was more concerned with how I looked and how my hair was doing,” she said. To keep her wig in place, sometimes Doja Cat would put on a beanie, which wasn’t really a solution. “I’d put on a beanie that’s on top of a wig, that’s on top of a wig cap that’s on top of braids, and I just can’t believe that it took me this long to be like, ‘Shave your f*cking head,’” she shared. I proceeded to clap. Doja Cat proceeded to shave her eyebrows.

Though going fully browless was once considered a telltale sign of someone having a minor emotional collapse akin to giving yourself bangs during lockdown, invisible brows have had a bit of glow-up of late. Kendall Jenner bleached hers for the Met Gala and Julia Fox (felt she) went incognito when she bleached her brows in June. Fully shaving off your brows is kind of a different deal, but still, invisi-brows are the moment and Doja Cat looks incredible without brows. Hello, bone structure.

Between her bold new look and her vulnerable monologue about prioritizing her happiness and well-being over trying to make her hair look a certain way, I’d say that Doja Cat is entering her self-love era. She’s planting a flag on Planet Her and putting herself first. You love to see it.