AT a recent party at the downtown club China Chalet, two attendees stood out from the rest of the hipsters. Among those gathered to see the group Salem perform were two individuals who, at first glance, had no eyebrows.

“If I had Brooke Shields’s eyebrows, I wouldn’t have erased them,” said Lauren Boyle, a 26-year-old fashion consultant. “But they weren’t adding to my look.”

Her friend David Toro appeared similarly shorn, but upon closer inspection, he had actually bleached his brows to invisibility.

“I get a lot of stares,” said Mr. Toro, who wasn’t immediately recognized by his friends that evening, his face had changed so much. “But it’s cool because they are perplexed looks instead of something hateful.”