Hibrow Disguise. Distributed by the Paper Magic Group of Moosic, Pennsylvania. Made in China.
Check the name on this ubiquitous Halloween costume.
The brand name Hibrow looks and sounds a lot like the word Hebrew.
I came to this realization entirely on my own, and while researching the item online I find I’m not the first to note the pun. Which only affirms the theory that there might be a subliminal anti-Semiticism at work here.
Evidence quickly mounts. Are the brows really all that high on these glasses? No, they’re relatively low. The prominent characteristic of the eyebrows is that they’re bushy, not that they’re high. Wouldn’t Bushy Brow be just as good a name as Hibrow?
Regardless, however you want to describe them, the brows are the least important element of this simple disguise, undoubtedly less prominent than the nose, glasses and mustache. Only four parts to the disguise, and the brow comes in fourth, yet gets top billing.
Besides, the humor the disguise conveys is not highbrow, it’s lowbrow. Top hats and ascots are highbrow. Plastic toy faceware is lowbrow.
A long-ago theater memory rushes back to me: a production of The Merchant of Venice directed by Laurence Senelick at my alma mater Tufts University’s old Arena Theatre in the early 1980s. One of the students in the cast was Hank Azaria, even then known for his funny voices and limber limbs. For a scene where the boorish Venetian boys mercilessly mock Shylock, I remember Hank Azaria nimbly placing one of these “Hibrow disguises” on his face. It was memorable because he did it so deftly, as quickly and effectively as if he’d just said the word “Jew,” except it was a more visually arresting slur. It was also the first time I’d ever considered that glasses-and-mustache arrangement to have any ethnic bearing whatsoever. I’d known them all my life but never known them, if you see what I mean.
"Why, that looks nothing like me!"
When I google phrases such as “Jewish nose and glasses,” I do get the occasional entries that admit a connection, such as “Purim Eye Glasses and Nose Shtik” (a catalogue item at jewishsoftware.com). A lot of sites (including Benny’s Educational Toys—The Jewish School Supply Company”) refer to them as “Groucho Nose Glasses.” Which is common, but when you think about it is just as odd as “HIbrow.” Groucho Marx didn’t always wear glasses, and when he did they were wire-framed and not black ovals like Hibrow has. As for his mustache, Groucho painted his on, until his YOu Bet Your Life days, when he grew a real one that was short and gray. So in Groucho’s case this disguise would mostly relate to the eyebrows. Plus he was Jewish. Which brings us right back to Hibrow. Except it doesn’t, because it only does if you know as Groucho glasses, so why would you want to call them Hibrow?
I might be overthinking this. Can you see my furrowed brow?