Meet Sophia Hadjipanteli, The Model With The Big Unibrow

There's a new model in town who's taking the world by storm, and for good reason. Because not only is Sophia Hadjipanteli striking because of her remarkable bone structure and piercing blue eyes, but she also has a massive unibrow.

Yes, a unibrow. And it's one that puts Bert from Sesame Street's notable effort to shame. The 21-year-old model and marketing major grew up in Maryland, the daughter of a Cypriot father and a British mother.

According to a profile on Vice, she was bullied by her peers at school - because kids can be cruel when confronted with anything that falls out of their experience of the everyday - and always felt out of place.

But as is so often the way, Hadjipanteli has had the last laugh. She first appeared on Italia Vogue's website at the age of 15 and then again three years later and she now has more than 152,000 followers on Instagram.

All of this certainly shows that, despite the occasional troll and death threat, she's beaten the odds and the bullies and thrived by just being herself.

"Growing up, I was always different," she told Vice. "I was known to have really quirky outfits -and I was really bullied for it. I hate to throw that word - bully - around, because it's so loosely thrown around these days, but it was so horrible in high school.

"And I guess that is how it is for a lot of people. But if anything, it just made me want to wear even quirkier things, because I did grow up in a really conservative area in Maryland, so I think that sort of stubbornness has followed me through to this day.

"Even at the time I was deciding to let my eyebrows do their own thing, it really was a stubbornness thing, like: 'Well, I like myself and I don't know why I have to do this if I don't like it.'"

She only started letting her eyebrows 'do their own thing' a couple of years ago, much for the same reason she was wearing all those quirky clothes - simply because she liked it.

"I think it was about two years ago-I just kind of decided to stop [waxing them]," she said. "I don't think it was anything in particular that happened that made me want to boycott doing my eyebrows, I think it was just a preference thing."

When Instagram put one of her photos on its Explore page, it was seen by more than a million people, and that's when things really started to take off. Of course, in amongst all the positive comments were a whole bunch of negative ones, but Hadjipanteli has discovered a great way to deal with them - by relishing in their anger.

She continued: "I'm constantly asked, 'how do you deal with the negative criticism?' Definitely take this at face value-but a part of me loves having that control over someone that they get so annoyed and mad.

"It's laughable at first. I was a little taken aback because the attention I did get online did come all at once for me [though]. I was put on the Instagram explore page one day when I was going to a motocross show-right before I posted this selfie and it reached, like, a million people, and there were hate comments I've never seen in my life before.

"That day I remember feeling really down. It took me quite a few months to understand why people have this [disposition]."

More than anything, it seems that Hadjipanteli wants to shake up the nation of traditional beauty standards.

"I think beauty in itself is great," she said, "because it's so subjective across cultures but I also think there's a big community that shames people for certain types of beauty and I think that's wrong. So instead of just getting rid of beauty standards, it should just be more inclusive.

"There's nothing wrong with filling in your eyebrows and plucking them-nothing wrong with that at all, it's gorgeous. But I think there needs to be change when the people are so fixated on the one beauty [norm] they pursue and they're not accepting of what someone else wants to do.

"They don't [even] really need to be accepting, but they have no right to bash them and make them feel like any less of a person.

"I just want to continue this thing about accepting people's preferences, not bashing people. I think the Internet has been a bit too mean these days."

Featured Image Credit: Instagram / Sophia Hadjipanteli

Topics: Entertainment, Celebrity

Mischa Pearlmen

Mischa is a freelance journalist usually based in either New York or London. He has written for Kerrang!, Record Collector, NME, the New York Observer and FLOOD magazine, among others. Contact him at [email protected]