In the 90’s, the thong pushed the pubes further in so that we had, if anything at all, just a dotted line of womanhood.   Women assured each other that the thong was extremely comfortable, my god so amazingly carefree and delightful to wear at all times, and later the comedian Janeane Garofalo announced that any discomfort women experienced while wearing the thong was simply “from bearing the weight of the yoke of the patriarchy.”

In the 2000’s, Sex in the City promoted the Brazilian, so yeah, the same series that popularized Magnolia cupcakes and Manolo Blahniks has brought us to the current day, where 70% of Cosmo readers are completely bald in their swimsuit area.

Extinction and Implants

Look- it’s not all bad news. The fashion in body hair has brought about the extinction of pubic lice, who in 2013 found that they had no place left to live- but just as skirt lengths change over the decades, so the pendulum swings for body hair.

For example, women in Korea right now are getting expensive hair implant surgery to get a lusher bush, which they find erotic and evocative of fertility and womanliness.

Bush Benefits

The medical community contends that waxing spreads infection, and that if you don’t remove your pubic hair, you’re less likely to contract genital herpes, HPV, HIV (which isn’t transmitted skin-to-skin, but can be transmitted through microscopic skin tears), and molluscum contagiosum, a skin virus thought to be increasingly occurring specifically because of bikini waxing.  It can also reduce vaginosis and UTI’s.  Seriously, pubic hair has a reason to be there.

In my own extremely personal opinion, the best and most compelling reason to go natural is:  It allows men to keep their pubic hair.  As more of the female population went bald, men noticed that their own pubes were cutting their partners up like barbed wire, so they started trimming to make sexual encounters less unpleasant, and lo and behold: men need pubes.  There’s no reason to see all that.  Women keep their genitalia tucked nicely away, like polite people.  Men have no such option.  Guys: Covered up is better.  We can find what we need.   In fact, it usually sticks out.

So, is the bush back?  Just as Samantha had a full ‘zilian in 2000, recent characters on Girls and Broad City have gone natural, paving the way to normalizing how women have looked for centuries.   The now-deceased American Apparel ran windows with full Merkins on its mannequins to promote its new underwear line.  Will it catch on?  I guess we’ll find out this Summer!