Every time you keep your bush, despite societal pressures, an angel gains its wings ❤️
Repeat after me: Full bush in a bikini, full bush in a bikini, FULL BUSH IN A BIKINI!
Towards the end of last year, bushes were everywhere. 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. “Feels 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 people are encouraging one another to resist 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 in their video, which now has 1.4 million likes and 12.6 million views. “Like yeah, that’s how it should be. That’s how it should 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 a lot of people very happy (me), it’s met with resistance from others. Some young women have taken to the comment sections of pro-bush TikToks to explain their reasons for shaving: “I shave because of sensory issues,” “I shave because the hair itches,” “Not shaving is unhygienic.” But these explanations deserve scrutiny.
Having pubic hair is, in fact, the opposite of unhygienic: one of its main functions is to protect the genital area from bacteria and other pathogens. Similar to eyelashes or nose hair, pubes trap dirt, debris, sweat and potentially harmful microorganisms, while the hair follicles produce sebum which prevents bacteria from reproducing. According to a 2016 study, people with pubic hair also have a lower risk of sexually transmitted infections. One of the reasons for this is that small tears in the skin from shaving or trimming could make it easier for infections to take hold.
It’s essential to interrogate the rules we’ve been taught to follow as “women” in society. Women are told they should be clean-shaven, a regulation rooted in racism. As Rebecca M Herzig outlines in her book, Plucked: A History of Hair Removal, “in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was an unprecedented effort to make hair removal mandatory for women in the US. As white men became increasingly fixated on controlling white women’s beauty regimens, hairlessness became resignified as a symbol of racial progress and superiority.”
So, while many of us claim that shaving or not shaving our body hair is our “choice”, it’s often a reflection 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 worth questioning why. Because at the end of the day, it’s just hair. If you feel pressured to shave your pubic hair, sit with that discomfort for a while. Question it. Interrogate it. And remember your bush is not your enemy – the real problem might be a world that insists on telling you what to do with your body.