Look, let’s not beat around the bushiness. Brows are big business these days, thanks to Cara Delevingne plus a slew of new gels/mousses/tidying combs and shaping treatments. Even during times of hirsute restraint, eyebrows have always been a weighty issue; a silent signifier of social status; a marker of intellect and culture even, (note the phrase ‘high brow’ or ‘low brow’), and now it seems, a symbol of your sexual obligingness.

As a close cousin of last year’s ‘scouse brow’, (typified by marker-pen heavy etchings and squared off ends) – the term, ‘slutty brows’ has been coined by American lifestyle blogger, Emily Schuman to describe a particularly over-skinny, over-arched pair of temple grazers. The implication being that playing fast and loose with your bathroom tweezers is indicative of being promiscuous in life – which ostensibly, sounds ridiculous, right? And yet, there’s plenty of fuel for Shuman’s fire: reference the more substantial forehead plumage of the aristocratic Jemima Goldsmith or Prince Harry’s belle du jour, Cressida Bonus, and it’s clear that in the language of beauty, a fuller brow translates to a loftier social standing – and your legs firmly zipped shut.

Of course, we flatter ourselves that our obsession with brows is a modern phenomenon. But really, it was ever thus. In L’Oreal’s commemorative 100^th anniversary tome, ‘100,000 Years of Beauty’, Guillemette Andreu of the Louvre explains that ‘the term for a make up artist in Egyptian hieroglyphic is derived from the root sesh, which means to write or engrave’. Google an image of Cleopatra and you’ll see that her own kohl-filled brows were sculpted in a dark ‘S’ shape that like graphic hieroglyphics, added strength to her face and spoke of her superior queenly status.

To this day, “brows are the coat hangers of the face – they give structure and shape to the other features,” says MAC’s Director of Make Up Artistry, Terry Barber. “Just as fashion designers play with bodily proportions, tweaking the shape and fullness of the brow changes the face’s character, adding femininity, severity, strength or an elfin quality”.

"it’s clear that in the language of beauty, a fuller brow translates to a loftier social standing"

I can’t help but think there’s something fantastically sexy about the curve of a brow as a nod to understated femininity. Like the gentle arch of the nape or the naughty bend of the instep, (not to mention the more obvious hilliness of the bum and boobs) curves are erogenous zones, serving to attract a mate since time began.

Remove the brow completely and you just look mad. I bleached mine right out once. My boyfriend of the time hated it. Hated it. But what did I care? Freed from the shackles of their hairy ceiling, my blue eyes looked huge. And what he didn’t know was that I was “totally Prada AW09”, Een if my dark brow roots did look a bit carroty when they grew out.

Now that Lady Gaga, Kelly Osbourne and Miley Cyrus have hit the peroxide too, brows – like twerking and public flesh-flashing – have become a feminist issue. Get rid of them and we’re deemed emotionally unstable. Seek to resist the pull of gravity on your brows with a little needled help, and apparently we’ve succumbed to female objectification by chauvinistic men. For as aesthetic doctor Dr Elisabeth Dancey says, ‘A child’s brow area is firm and slightly lifted. As we age, the skin and muscle around the eye thins, causing the brow to drop’. Dancey counteracts this by injecting a little hyarulonic acid filler into the tail of the brow and temple to resurrect the gentle lift of youth.

Thankfully for those of us who wish to circumvent the mad/male-dominated conundrum, the SS14 catwalks offer a more affordable solution (stick with me here): The ‘feral’ brow. ‘In line with this season’s other beauty trends, SS14 brows are tousled, less ‘done’ and more androgynously wild,’ says UK Make Up Director or Maybelline New York, Sharon Dowsett. “They’ve also adopted the lexicon of hair and make up with ‘back brushed’, ‘glossy’ and ‘mascara-ed’ brows being discussed backstage’.   

Cast your eyes over the Erdem, Jil Sander and Todd Lynn SS14 shows and you’ll see the new brow ideal is slightly flatter, messier, a little more boyish – and as such, resembles the full, virginal state of a youthful pair before we’ve tweezed and waxed the life out of them as adults, which in and of itself, blindly adheres to the theory: over-arched, thin brows=old and/or slutty person.

In a post-recessionary world where brows mean as much as ever, this artfully tousled brow marks us out as women of the wilderness - emerging from the economic jungle stronger than ever. Failing that, with a naturally enthickened brow, you’ll at least be on-trend, youthfully bristly and of course – the supposed picture of propriety, should you want to be.

Click through the gallery for a visual history of the most iconic brow shapes of all time.