Eyebrow threading takes a cozy seat within the mainstream’s couch-lined sense of familiarity when male U.S. soldiers overseas start demanding the procedure regularly. You’ve risen far from the mall-stationed sideshow you once were, eyebrow threading.

With Afghanistan-stationed Private First Class Richard Guillemette, his first experience with brow sculpting came as a surprise accident. He approached the Afghan barber shop on base with a haircut in mind but before her knew it, the barber took a straight-blade razor to his brows, shifting them into sassy arches. Only a month since the mishap, Pfc. Guillemetter’s returned for brow maintenance twice already. “They were getting a little bushy,” he defends to The Wall Street Journal

And Pfc. Guillemette isn’t alone with a burning desire for carefully curious eyebrows. The trend keeps one camp barber at a base by the Pakistan border busy with an average of one or two U.S. soldiers a day in for his special-technique threading sessions.

Army regulations remain mum any rules or regulations specifically on eyebrow grooming. The Marine Corps., however, added a line to its grooming regulations five years ago stating that “excessive plucking or removal of eyebrows is not authorized, except for medical reasons.” But how much is too much, Marine Corps.? That remains a mystery. And until the rules spell out exactly how high of an arch will earn an armed serviceman a kick in the britches, we say pluck away, gentlemen. [via The Wall Street Journal]

Do you like it when guys groom their eyebrows? Would you ever recommend your boyfriend or a guy friend to an eyebrow threading salon?