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Pubic hair has always been a sensitive subject, including in the world of fashion and beauty. A Tom Ford–era Gucci ad featuring a seminude model with a G below her waistband (hand-shaped by hairstylist Orlando Pita) caused an absolute stir in 2004. And it wasn’t just the porcelain-doll beauty look that broke the internet at John Galliano’s viral Maison Margiela Artisanal show last year: The hand-embroidered merkins made of human hair and silk did too. In the postshow chatter, some wondered if, after an era defined by porno-level smoothness, a Margiela merkin could become a new fashion status symbol, like a Birkin bag. Then, after the phrase “full bush in a bikini” earwormed its way into the cultural zeitgeist via TikTok earlier this year, it was official: Full pubic hair was back.
Never one to beat around the bush, the ever-enterprising Kim Kardashian, a genius marketer, has gotten in on the fun, launching Skims’s $32 Faux Hair Micro String Thong last week with 12 different hair-color and skin-tone combinations—and, more interestingly, two hair types. Unlike the Galliano merkin, which was affixed to a piece of clothing, the Skims faux hair thong is an actual pair of underwear: The pencil-thin G-string is accented with a palm-size merkin, still handmade but this time using synthetic materials. I immediately added it to cart, and I wasn’t alone: It’s now sold out in every variety (though the TikTok shop already has a dupe available for $10).
Like many Arab women, I have dark, thriving hair everywhere, though my relationship to it varies from body part to body part. I’ve done rounds of laser hair removal on my arms (mostly unsuccessful, as I still Nair them weekly); I’m a loyal Wax Pass subscriber for the Brazilian at European Wax Center, but I’ve forgone shaving my armpits for the last five years or so. (It’s my subtle way of asserting my feminist values despite my fondness for dressing like a 1950s housewife.)
“Where will you wear it?” my group chat asked when I shared a selfie of me wearing the thong merkin over sweatpants (unintentionally, those were Skims too). “How will you zip your jeans?” my partner replied when I sent him something slightly more scandalous. “How will you launder it?” HOEC Chloe Malle wondered when I confessed my impulse purchase to her in our one-on-one. (No, I wasn’t wearing it at the time.)
Indeed, every time I brought up my purchase (yes, I’m an oversharer), hairy conversations were had—which, beauty historian Rachael Gibson argues, is sort of the point. “This is a marketing piece to get us talking, in keeping with the nipple bra,” she says. “It feels uncomfortable to me to monetize and market bodily features as a punch line, which is what this feels like, as opposed to some kind of celebration of body hair, which it definitely isn’t.”
Kardashian, to be sure, is on-the-record virtually hairless. “I am Armenian, so of course I am obsessed with laser hair removal,” she told Allure in 2010. “Arms, bikini, legs, underarms....” And more recently she’s shared selfies from laser-hair-removal spas. Could it be, then, that she’s experiencing a bit of hair envy?
“I was one of those girls who sprinted to get laser hair removal the second I was old enough,” says Vogue sex columnist Eileen Kelly, “a decision I now mildly regret, as I’m as bald as they come down there. For people like me who have a touch of bush envy, this feels like a charming experiment in wish fulfillment. Though I suppose the logistics get tricky. What happens when it’s time to actually have sex? Does the bush have to come off?”
While I myself haven’t quite figured out the when-where-how of wearing my new merkin outside the house, I do think the Birkin comparison is apt: You buy it to show it off, not trap it under a pair of Levi’s. It should be noted, though, that I’m more of a Margaux 15 girl.
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