Dove Cameron discovered her brows weren’t thin — they were just unruly. Bar soap fixed that, and it turns out dermatologists back the technique.
“I gaslit myself my whole life into thinking that I had super-thin eyebrows,” Dove Cameron told Who What Wear in a recent interview, “and then I realized they all just like to gather in the center.”
Her fix: a bar of soap and a spoolie brush. “With a really intense soap brow — any kind of soap, even house soap will work — I like to do a really strong brow,” Cameron said.
The technique isn’t new to the makeup industry. It has been a backstage staple for years, favored by makeup artists who want a full, laminated brow look without the salon commitment of a chemical lamination treatment. What Cameron is describing — a soap-scraped spoolie brushed through the brow hairs upward — is the same method celebrity makeup artist Katie Mellinger explained to Who What Wear in 2023: “Soap brows refers to a technique of creating a brow shape using a glycerin-based soap to sculpt the brow shape, usually in an upward motion, to give a laminated look.”
The science behind it is glycerin. The ingredient coats individual hair strands, making each one look slightly fuller while holding them in the direction you’ve brushed them. “Glycerin is a special type of lipid, or an oily molecule, that can coat the surface of hairs to make each individual hair strand look a little bit fuller,” dermatologist Alok Vij, MD, told Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials. Once dry, glycerin sets like a very light wax — not stiff, but directional — and unlike a standard clear brow gel, the hold is stronger and doesn’t flake.
Cameron’s broader point about clustering is worth taking seriously. Many people with fine or naturally light brows perceive them as sparse because the hairs grow toward the center, leaving the outer portions of the arch looking thin. Soap brows solve this differently than a brow pencil does: rather than drawing density onto the skin, they push existing hairs outward and hold them where you brush them, creating the appearance of a wider, fuller arch.
The technique works best on a slightly damp spoolie — not soaking wet, which causes the soap to foam and leave a white residue on the brow. Scraping the spoolie lightly across the top of the bar rather than digging in builds a paste that’s thin enough to stay in place. Mellinger recommends combing the inner brow at roughly a 23-degree angle and the outer brow at a 45-degree angle toward the top of the ear — the same geometry used in professional brow lamination. Fill in any sparse spots with a brow pencil or powder before applying soap, since once the soap is set, filling in patchiness underneath becomes significantly harder.
Cameron, who recently went brunette and noted in the interview that her natural brows are lighter than her hair color, does this step — adding color before locking everything in place.
As for the directive that “any soap will work,” Dr. Vij would add a small caveat: clear, glycerin-based soaps carry the lowest risk of irritation on the sensitive skin around the brow area. Soaps with heavy fragrance, dyes, or preservatives can trigger allergic or irritative reactions that show up as redness or itching. The most commonly recommended affordable option is Pears Transparent Glycerin Bar Soap, which retails for around $8 and has a dedicated following specifically for brow use. For a more portable version, Mellinger keeps West Barn Co.’s Soap Brows tin in her professional kit.
The bigger takeaway from Cameron is less about the specific soap and more about the self-diagnosis that preceded it. The brow problem wasn’t thinness — it was misdirection. Soap brows are primarily a shaping tool, and they work best when the issue is placement rather than density. If your brows look sparse but feel like they should have more hair than they’re showing, her approach is worth the experiment. The tools are already on the shelf.
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