Reading artist says she’s never felt more confident than when embracing her monobrow

An artist who was called a ‘gorilla’ by cruel bullies has revealed how she has never felt so confident since embracing her thick unibrow – waving goodbye to a decade of over-plucking it.

Cydni Akbar, from Reading, Berkshire, claims she’s always had a monobrow but when she started secondary school was singled out and ‘taken the mick out of’ for not looking like the rest of her classmates.

The student, 21, said that in a bid to prevent herself from ‘standing out’ and to stop the name-calling she decided to have it plucked off during her early teens.

But after a decade of ‘hiding behind someone that wasn’t truly herself’ the art student decided to grow back her unibrow and claims she’s now the most confident and happiest she’s ever been. 

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After embarking on an ’empowering’ journey of self-love Cydni has now dedicated her TikTok account to promoting body positivity and has amassed more than 53,000 followers on the platform.

Cydni said: ‘I’m 100 per cent at my most confident now and the happiest I’ve ever been because I’ve been on a self-love journey and have become comfortable with myself.

‘I can actually look at myself like ‘you’re awesome, you can do this’ and ‘you’re the best version of yourself’.

‘For many years I’ve looked at myself in the mirror and just cried and not loved who I am. 

‘I kind of hid behind someone that wasn’t truly me just because of a little bit of hair – I was taking it away for other people’s pleasure, not for my own.

‘It feels very empowering to take back what’s mine. It sounds silly when I say that, everyone else says it’s “just a bit of hair” but it’s a massive thing for me.

‘It’s learning to love yourself for who you are and not changing for anybody, and that is what my unibrow represents to me.’

The artist said she’s always had a unibrow but the bullying started during secondary school, prompting her to begin plucking it out when she was around 12 years old. 

‘I’ve got quite dark hair and people used to call me [a] gorilla and say “why do you look like that? You don’t look like the rest of us” and that I should shave it off,’ she added.

‘There was a group of popular girls and I remember them coming up to me and being like “why have you got that?” and I said “got what?” and they were like ‘that thing between your eyebrows’.

‘I remember sitting there silently and just looking at them because there was no point in me responding because they didn’t understand.

‘It used to make me feel like I didn’t want to stand out and be the different person so I just got rid of it to stop all of it and for people to stop asking.

‘It was a really weird feeling. I remember looking at myself in the mirror thinking ‘this is weird, but I guess I’m going to have to get used to it because I don’t want all these comments anymore’.’ 

But last September Cydni decided it was time to grow her unibrow back and said that her 22-year-old boyfriend Joe Dale has been incredibly supportive during the entire process.

Cydni said: ‘Last year I thought “this is the year I actually become me”.

‘People controlled what I did with my own body for such a long time and Frida Kahlo has always been a massive inspiration for me.

‘I looked at past photographs of me and it’s funny because I always knew I had a unibrow but I never really saw the beauty of it in myself until last year.

‘Joe’s so lovely. He always says “do whatever you want to do if it makes you happy, and I’ll be happy for you”‘.

‘When it fully grew out I kept saying to him ‘do you prefer me now or when I didn’t have a unibrow?’

‘He said ‘I can’t remember what you look like without a unibrow, I look at the photographs and don’t see that that’s really you.’

‘That’s really sweet actually because he’s accepted me for what I want to look like.

‘I think people need to be more like that and accept people for who they are and how they want to look.’

Cydni started her TikTok account sharing make-up videos but is now dedicating her platform to sharing posts about body positivity which has racked up more than 789,000 likes. 

The final year art student frequently posts videos of her responses to the ‘hateful’ comments she’s received and believes the bullies have got her to where she is today.

Cydni said: ‘I thought “that’s not fair that they can just say that and then walk away from me”.’

‘This girl commented on my video saying “I don’t want to look like you, that’s why I’ve booked into a beauty salon”.’

‘I responded saying it was completely fine that she wanted to look the way she wanted to look and I want to look the way I want to look, but there’s no need to be horrible about it.

‘The first time I went live on TikTok I had over 5,000 viewers at one time and probably 4,000 of them were haters commenting the shave emoji and calling me a ‘gorilla’.

‘I’ve had the good and the bad – they’re days that the good overweighs the bad and there’s days that the bad overweighs the good.’

Despite this Cydni said she has amazing support and is inundated with messages from admirers daily saying she’s helped them with their own insecurities and to overcome bullies.

Cydni said: ‘I know that I have to keep going for other people – a lot of mums have messaged me saying their daughters who are 10 or 11 look up to me because they have a unibrow.

‘That was my age – I wish I had someone to look up to when I was that age.

‘It blows me away and makes me a bit emotional. I did this for myself and now I’m doing it for others – and I’m so happy to do that and to help other people be who they are.

‘I want people to feel good in their own skin no matter what they look like, no matter if their hair is growing there or not, no matter what body size they are or even gender.

‘A lot of haters want everybody to look the same and abide by the same beauty standards – but everybody is different, and if everybody looked the same it would be boring.’