Kim Kardashian’s Skims innerwear brand, which she co-founded in 2019 with investors Emma and Jens Grede, has been known to make interesting statement products, such as push-up bras that mimic the appearance of bralessness with a nipple-like feature that’s visible through clothing. Their latest product is a thong with a front replicating pubic hair, in several colours, with a choice of straight or curly.
In recent years, untamed pubic hair has become a trend, with celebrities like Doja Cat and Julia Fox even showing theirs off on the red carpet — after previous seasons in which full baldness or minimalising grooming methods dominated media representation (and pornography). Of course, this applies only to women, as most unrealistic beauty standards do.
Skims’ merkin undergarment has created a stir, and is seen as distasteful because Kardashian is a willing part of the industry that creates appearance-related complexes and therefore a market, then capitalises through products that rectify or enhance. The thongs have reportedly sold out in all styles and sizes immediately. If this is factual and not a PR tactic, it speaks to the painful, compulsive, deeply-inculcated way in which women feel they must change themselves all the time, in order to conform or bend to one ideal, trend, request, insult or another.
When netizens say about these thongs, “My culture is not your costume”, they aren’t being tongue-in-cheek. While pressure to remove or alter pubic hair has never been as pervasive as other aesthetic pressures involving weight, ageing, complexion, makeup usage and other aspects that are publicly obvious, there is at least a mild awareness among women that keeping nether hair natural is touted by some as a choice — a brave or disgusting choice — rather than the norm (even if it is the norm). Removing it is also a choice, in that sense, even if it comes from conditioning.
Mostly, it doesn’t matter. Not to people who are attracted to women. Not to women themselves. But unlike, say, having a skin condition or not having media-defined perfect measurements, it’s not difficult to live in this world with natural pubic hair — unless one encounters a lover who doesn’t like it. Then, the weight of all the messaging comes home, no matter how long one has happily, hairily enjoyed herself in the past. If that lover is hurtful or demanding about their inclinations, shames one about their own preferences or about their body itself, or refuses to provide or partake in pleasurable acts as a result, another “choice” may have to be made.
On the other hand, as actors Regina Hall and Sanaa Lathan say in a clip that has gone viral again thanks to this thong, what happens if you encounter a lover who likes a luxurious bush, and yours doesn’t grow healthily anymore after years of denudation?
It’s from all these insecurities that products like, but certainly not limited to, the new Skims thong benefit from. They exist because a need, a need that plays into feelings of inadequacy fostered by public narratives and private humiliations, exists. This thong doesn’t celebrate the natural. It merely mocks everyone — those who maintain wild pubes, and those who no longer do.
