Repeat after me: Full bush in a bikini, full bush in a bikini, FULL BUSH IN A BIKINI!
Towards the top of last 12 months, bushes were in every single place. From the Margiela catwalk and discussions about only trusting women with full bushes, to those with bushes publicly mourning their decision to shave their pubic hair on X. “Shaved my bush for literally no reason,” wrote one X user. “Looks like I just killed a dog.” Real.
As we enter 2025, full bush appreciation hasn’t waned; it’s thriving. Promoted by TikTok user Sujindah, young persons are encouraging each other to withstand the societal pressure to violently wax their bushes for bikini season.
“I won’t share it, but there was this one Etsy review for a bikini where the girl had a full bush, and I got radicalised by that Etsy review,” Sujindah states of their video, which now has 1.4 million likes and 12.6 million views. “Like yeah, that’s the way it ought to be. That’s the way it ought to be.” Sujindah’s video sparked a trend, with many videos being posted in response stating that the users had been similarly ”radicalised” by the Etsy review.
While pro-bush discourse makes lots of people very glad (me), it’s met with resistance from others. Some young women have taken to the comment sections of pro-bush TikToks to elucidate their reasons for shaving: “I shave due to sensory issues,” “I shave since the hair itches,” “Not shaving is unhygienic.” But these explanations deserve scrutiny.
Having pubic hair is, in actual fact, the other of unhygienic: one in every of its essential functions is to protect the genital area from bacteria and other pathogens. Much like eyelashes or nose hair, pubes trap dirt, debris, sweat and potentially harmful microorganisms, while the hair follicles produce sebum which prevents bacteria from reproducing. In accordance with a 2016 study, individuals with pubic hair even have a lower risk of sexually transmitted infections. Certainly one of the explanations for that is that small tears within the skin from shaving or trimming could make it easier for infections to take hold.
It’s essential to interrogate the principles we’ve been taught to follow as “women” in society. Women are told they ought to be clean-shaven, a regulation rooted in racism. As Rebecca M Herzig outlines in her book, Plucked: A History of Hair Removal, “within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was an unprecedented effort to make hair removal mandatory for ladies within the US. As white men became increasingly fixated on controlling white women’s beauty regimens, hairlessness became resignified as a logo of racial progress and superiority.”
So, while lots of us claim that shaving or not shaving our body hair is our “alternative”, it’s often a mirrored image of desires we’ve internalised from others. These desires align with an idealised version of (white) womanhood and femininity that society asks us to embody; and rewards us for adhering to.
Hair makes us uncomfortable, and it’s value questioning why. Because at the top of the day, it’s just hair. When you feel pressured to shave your pubic hair, sit with that discomfort for some time. Query it. Interrogate it. And remember your bush is just not your enemy – the true problem could be a world that insists on telling you what to do together with your body.
