One afternoon last month, the 19-year-old walked out of a Hollywood salon — the salon where she thought she had an appointment — and dictated to a handful of TikTok followers the downright bizarre saga of how her brows were "physically scammed" off of her face.
"If you see my brows in the next couple months," she says in the video, sounding exasperated, "no, you did not."
Her confusion and frustration were as raw as the rosy, freshly waxed skin above and below her browline. Singer couldn't have known that, over the next few weeks, the 30-second video would be watched more than 3 million times by countless viewers. (So many brows.)
In the video, an endearingly manic Singer guides viewers through the play-by-play she said unfolded just moments before:
To fully appreciate the absurdity of what Singer said happened next, you need to first understand the close relationship she enjoys with the beautician who has been doing her brows for the past couple years: Loula Argiropoulos, the owner and operator of Athena's Brow Boutique.@jgoldiee Now i have to spend another 2 years growing them out to FIX THIS MESSSSSS. That’s ATHENAS with LOULA ##greenscreen ##fyp ##eyebrows ##LittleVoice
? original sound - jgoldiee
Argiropoulos, who's 36, left a job earlier this year with Anastasia Beverly Hills cosmetics in the Nordstrom at Aventura Mall to start her own business. In June, she began accepting clients at her new location in a strip mall off Stirling Road in Hollywood. The plaza contains 12 shops, all of which bear the same numerical address (2832 Stirling Road) but different suite letters (Athena's is "N").
One of the neighboring businesses is a full-service salon called Queen Nails. It also happened to be the first salon Singer, a first-time visitor to the new location, noticed when she rolled into the parking lot that afternoon — none the wiser that Athena's is located at the opposite end of the plaza.
"So I had an eyebrow appointment with the girl who's been doing my brows for years, and I love her," Singer says in the video. "Anyway, I scheduled this appointment with her, and she's at this new salon. So she sent me to the address, and I walk inside."
"Hey, is Loula here?" Singer asked a woman upon entering the salon. "I have an appointment."
The woman, Singer says in the video, led her further into the salon. Argiropoulos was nowhere in sight.
"Yeah, Loula's here," the woman said, according to Singer, "but she wants me to do your brows."
Meanwhile, in another part of the plaza...
Singer's appointment with Argiropoulos that day was scheduled for noon. By 12:10, Argiropoulos was still waiting for her customer, who was usually prompt. Argiropoulos thought maybe she was having trouble finding the strip mall. After all, it was her first time at the new setup. The beautician fired off a text.
"You good, my love?"
Twenty minutes later, Singer called.
"Hey, I just got my brows done," she told Argiropoulos.
"Huh?" the beautician said. "Where? You were in the wrong place, obviously."
"Oh my god," Singer said.
Moments after hanging up, Singer recorded her video.
Singer and Argiropoulos still aren't entirely clear on what transpired. A simple miscommunication? A deliberate act of deceit?
But of this much Singer feels confident: She was misled.
Just before she left the salon that day, Singer tells New Times, it began to dawn on her that she may have been duped.
"As I went to go check out, she rang me up for $10," Singer says. "And that's when I realized something was off."
Loula's standard rate for brows is $30.
"I mean, I did walk into the wrong place. There were parts of it that were on me." Singer says. "There was a misunderstanding on my part, too. It's not like I'm completely absolved of any fault."
As for her brows, only time will fix them.
"Now i have to spend another two years growing them out to FIX THIS MESSSSSS," Singer typed into the video caption. (Yes, she said, she's aware it will not take her brows two years to grow back, but she says that's how long it took her to achieve the arch and shape she got with Argiropoulos.)
On a recent afternoon, a New Times reporter paid a visit to Queen Nails and inquired whether they do brows.
A friendly associate smiled and nodded yes, pointing to a female colleague who was giving a manicure at a workstation.
"Does Loula work here?" the reporter asked.
The woman pointed at herself. "Yes, I'm Loula," she affirmed.
Reached by phone, Queen Nails owner Stanley Nguyen acknowledges that an employee had already alerted him to Singer's TikTok video. The problem, he explains, is a language barrier.
He says the employee Singer interacted with does not speak English well. Nguyen and his employees speak Vietnamese.
"If the customer doesn't like her eyebrows, [she may] come in and get her money back," Nguyen says. "Nothing wrong — it's only $10."
In a separate interview, Singer contended that there did not appear to be a language barrier and that she and the associate conversed with ease.
Regardless of what happened the day Singer walked into Queen, Argiropoulos holds no ill will toward her new neighbor.
"I didn't go over there to confront them or anything," she tells New Times. "I said, 'You know what, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn't hear correctly.... I just left it at that. I'm not here to get in a fight with any of my neighbors or anything like that. I'm happy with where I stand today."
"But I would like to make it known," she added after a pause, "that I am the Loula."
