Kim Kardashian's Skims brand is a clear example of a strategy to generate buzz and scandal—not just by selling, but also by getting people talking about the product, even if it's out of rejection—too often working against major feminist achievements. She's already done this in the past with shapewear, facial compression bands, and nipple bras, and now it's the turn of a very special thong: tiny, made of sheer mesh, and with artificial hair that simulates a bushy pubis. It's available in twelve different shades, and its ad claims that "your rug can be any color you want." This piece, in fact, isn't new: it revives an idea that John Galliano masterfully developed for Maison Margiela in 2024, which in turn has antecedents in the vindictive proposals of Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood. Without wishing to play into Kardashian's hands or fuel controversy, this launch is an opportunity to talk about the pubic wig (merkin in English or toupee in our popular imagination), which has had a discreet but relevant role throughout history.
In art, female representations almost never showed public hair, due to moral and religious conventions. Body hair has been associated with the human and mortal world, while divinities appear shaved and untouchable, since the lack of hair symbolized innocence, youth, and purity. During the Baroque and Rococo periods, some erotic or courtly representations suggested pubic hair, but in a partial and aesthetic, often geometric way. It was not until The Origin of the World (1866) by Gustave Courbet, this ideal is shattered: the female body is shown as real, sexual, and human, without decoration or idealization. However, these types of representations were only visible in private or pornographic contexts, never in academic or religious art, and it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that artists such as Carolee Schneemann and Lynda Benglis drove major social change, with sexual freedom and the vindication of bodily realism.
Public hair also played a role as a sexual fetish and a tool of seduction. Madame du Barry, Louis XV's mistress, after being raped by her brother-in-law, lost her pubic hair and turned to the royal hairdresser Leonard to restore it. Six weeks later, with the area restored and populated, she was able to resume intimate encounters with the king without risking disappointment. Madame du Barry, like other courtesans and prostitutes of the time, used public wigs to conceal baldness caused by venereal disease, decorated in Rococo fashions.
Hollywood introduced the common use of merkins to protect the actresses' privacy and comply with the restrictions of the Hays Code. Even today, these wigs are used in films to maintain historical accuracy and cover partial hair removal marks or "blemishes" in nude scenes. Films such as The Wolf of Wall Street, The reader either Game of Thunder have used, and Hollywood has designers who specialize in this meticulous craft, who create merkins adapted to each actress, reproducing historical styles, such as the lush pubes of the 17th and 18th centuries, without breaking the cinematic narrative.
Although Kardashian's thong is more marketing than advocacy, it highlights how control over body hair has been, throughout history, an instrument of both female subjugation and emancipation. Both the abundant pubic hair of the 1980s and its complete absence in the early 2000s were largely dictated by the influence of pornography and, therefore, by male sexual preferences. It's interesting, then, that hair in this area is no longer determined by the desires of others and is simply considered a fundamental bodily mechanism for intimate health.
