Perhaps there’s some science behind the dramatic eyebrow trend in any case.

A recent study finds that facial expression, like lips and eyebrows, are inclined to stand out less as people become older. Due to that, the authors say, people perceive faces with more contrast as younger.

Within the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, researchers analyzed photographs of 763 makeup-free women with various skin tones between ages 20 and 80. A pc program analyzed the photos for facial contrast: a measure of how much the eyes, lips and eyebrows stand out as a result of differences in color, lightness or darkness with the encompassing skin.

Young women had more facial contrast, and older women had less. Contrast especially decreased in areas across the mouth and eyebrows as women got older.

Next, the researchers Photoshopped a number of the pictures, creating two nearly an identical versions of every face with various levels of contrast. They showed these photographs to volunteers and asked them to decide on the younger-looking face. Almost 80% of the time, people said the high-contrast face appeared younger than the low-contrast one.

The findings were similar across quite a lot of ethnicities, suggesting that facial contrast—like wrinkles and changes in skin pigmentation—is actually a “cross-cultural cue” for perceiving how old an individual is, the authors wrote of their paper.

Anyone who’s ever filtered a selfie on Instagram won’t be surprised by this effect of contrast. However the findings can also help explain why people often use makeup to look younger.

The study didn’t involve makeup, so the authors say obviously that darkening features cosmetically would have the identical anti-aging results as demonstrated within the study. “But the best way we manipulated features within the photos was very just like what you’d do with makeup, and I could be surprised when you couldn’t get similar effects,” says co-author Richard Russell, associate professor of psychology at Gettysburg College. “We all know that lips get less red with age and eyebrows get lighter, for example, and people are each things that you would address with makeup, when you wanted.”

The most important surprise of all was the ability of the brow. For girls of all ethnicities, brow color faded with age—so darkening them may really make people look younger, the researchers say.

Though the study was only done in women, the findings likely apply to men, too. Other research suggests that the decline of facial contrast with age shouldn’t be just true of ladies, but in addition true of men.

This text was originally published on TIME.