Rewrite
At the end of Ridley Scott’s critically acclaimed sci-fi horror film Alien (1979), Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) famously strips. The scene, which some have described as exploitative and objectifying, shows Ripley removing her gear after the rest of her crew has died. She’s left in a tank top and white underpants as she prepares for stasis (a confined area of space where time stops and everything inside is rendered motionless). In this final scene, Ripley’s low-waisted underpants reveal the top part of her pubic region as she confronts an alien that has stowed itself in a narrow compartment.
This movie (and particularly this scene) launched Weaver’s acting career, but many questioned why Ripley, who had been in space for God knows how long, would have what appeared to be a freshly waxed vagina. In fact, it’s been reported that Weaver had a bush while filming this scene, which peeked out of her underwear but was removed in post-production. 45 years later, Alien was re-released in 4K in April of this year, with some of Weaver’s pubic hair digitally restored. While I can’t confirm if this quote is accurate (as no blog has linked back to the original article where Scott allegedly said it), many outlets reported that Scott commented on the return of Weaver’s bush, explaining, “Times were different then. Audiences weren’t ready for a bush like that. It would have paralysed them, put them into a coma.” True or not, papa spilled! A full bush is powerful, and while audiences in the late 70s supposedly weren’t ready to see one on screen, they sure as hell are now.
in bed playing w my bush.. nobody cheating on me… this is the life
— star ֶֶֶֶֶֶָָָָָָ֢֢֢֢֢֢ ༯ (@roziesta) October 6, 2024
On TikTok, love and admiration for full bushes is widespread. Earlier this month, a video by content creator Punk Croc went viral, with them proudly proclaiming that they’re at an age in life where “they only want advice from people with full bushes”. They added, “You can be bald down there; that’s your choice, obviously. Do what you want, but I do not want any advice from you about men, money, or anything.” The creator is clearly being hyperbolic, but this enthusiastic embrace of full bushes has inspired others to talk about theirs online too. From videos of young women discussing the simple pleasure of twirling their pubic hair when it gets long enough to X posts from people complaining about the loss of their bush after shaving: “Fully shaved and I feel so mortified every time I look at myself naked in the mirror. Bush is elite. I hate this so bad… What have I done?” one X user exclaims.
As beauty critic Jessica DeFino found when she polled over 14,000 people for her Guardian beauty column Ask Ugly, the bush is back, with only 15 per cent of respondents saying they’re completely bare. We also saw the return of the bush on the runway earlier this year at the Maison Margiela Artisanal show in January. But Punk Croc’s statement, albeit a joke, has stuck with me: Are people with a full-on bush inherently more trustworthy than those without?
@punk.croc I love bush (not the president)
“Maybe in some messed up way, people believe this to be true because hair is associated with masculinity,” my co-worker George mused. He was met with a chorus of nos and boos from the women on my team, and while I don’t entirely agree with him, I understood his thought process. Historically, women have felt more pressure to remove their body hair because it’s seen as ‘unwomanly’ – and therefore masculine. As Susan Sontag explained in her essay The Double Standard of Ageing, “Masculinity is identified with competence, autonomy, and self-control.” Men are often encouraged to keep their body hair because it reaffirms their masculinity and the qualities listed above. 26-year-old Malcolm* agrees, telling Dazed that “hair is definitely still tied up in questions of masculinity. I’ve been in multiple conversations where (even jokingly) the presence of facial hair is used as a signifier of masculinity, and the absence of it is the absence of masculinity, too. I think male pubic hair is caught up in the same associations for me.” He continues: “In a past relationship, I never shaved because my previous long-term girlfriend expressed a preference for me not to.”
While George’s observation is interesting, it’s not the reason some women and non-binary people claim to trust those with a full bush more. 26-year-old Julia* believes that “a full bush demonstrates an innate sense of character, the ability to think for yourself above all, and to go against decades of toxic conditioning around female beauty standards, which were invented purely for the male gaze.” She continues: “Women who think they’re pruning their bush for themselves – your desires are not your own, hun.” 24-year-old Diane* similarly agrees, reminding me of the infamous 2013 video by former Vine and YouTube heartthrobs Cameron Dallas, JC Caylen, and Nash Grier, where they told their young female audience what guys look for in girls. In the video, the trio spoke passionately (and disgustingly) about how women should shave their entire bodies: no arm hair, no peach fuzz, nothing. While the video was met with intense backlash, their young female audience took their words to heart. “I feel like their comments shaped a lot of people my age. When I was 17 and slept with men, I didn’t even know I was allowed to have a bush. So yeah, a bush to me signals that you are more self-aware.”
When I showed Julia* and Diane’s* comments to a close friend, she said the remarks were not only condescending but sexist: “It’s sexist to think that just because I’ve chosen to shave, it’s because of men. Sometimes it just gets itchy down there and I want to get rid of it.” And it’s true that people have many reasons for shaving their pubic hair, unrelated to men or anyone else’s desires. However, we are sometimes quick to deny that we live in a world where we are socially conditioned to act in accordance with our gender. So, while many of us claim that shaving or not shaving our body hair is our “choice”, it’s often the desires of others that we’ve internalised as our own.
While this article was meant to be lighthearted, based on a TikTok video I jokingly agreed with, it has sparked intense debates among my friends, family, and co-workers about autonomy, sexuality, and desirability. As my friend Georgia proclaimed over DMs, “Hair is never just hair” – hair is everything, and to some, it can even represent different things about a person. And it’s important to note, as one of my editors gently reminded me, that sometimes having these conversations can make people feel worse about themselves. “We should be kinder. Women don’t need more reasons to feel bad about their bodies,” she tells me. “When everything in society tells you that your body is imperfect or ugly, it takes intense strength of character to throw away your razors and your make-up bags. And if you want to do something that will make you privately feel more comfortable or sexually confident, why not? Yeah, it’s technically ‘choice feminism’, but it doesn’t feel particularly helpful, given all the more pressing issues facing women in the world, to police the aesthetics of their genitalia.”
Merkins by Pablo Kuemin10 Images
To clarify: your pubic hair, or lack thereof, does not make you more or less trustworthy (lol). But perhaps it wouldn’t hurt us to question what we do to our bodies and why rather than mindlessly following what’s expected of us. At the end of her column, where she was advising a freshly divorced woman about whether to shave her pubic and bum hair, DeFino confesses that she wished she had questioned her ex-husband’s preference for a shaved pubic region. “When he expressed a preference for a mannequin-smooth pubic mound, I booked six permanent laser-hair removal sessions on the spot. Now, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d leaned into that friction, let myself feel uncomfortable and unattractive, and questioned what this request might mean for our future. Would he have other ideas about how I should look? (He did.) Would I be willing to compromise my body for those preferences, too? (I wasn’t.)” Perhaps we should all make more of an effort to sit with what makes us feel uncomfortable and unattractive – and see what it teaches us about ourselves and what we truly want and desire.
*Names have been changed.
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At the end of Ridley Scott’s critically acclaimed sci-fi horror film Alien (1979), Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) famously strips. The scene, which some have described as exploitative and objectifying, shows Ripley removing her gear after the rest of her crew has died. She’s left in a tank top and white underpants as she prepares for stasis (a confined area of space where time stops and everything inside is rendered motionless). In this final scene, Ripley’s low-waisted underpants reveal the top part of her pubic region as she confronts an alien that has stowed itself in a narrow compartment.
This movie (and particularly this scene) launched Weaver’s acting career, but many questioned why Ripley, who had been in space for God knows how long, would have what appeared to be a freshly waxed vagina. In fact, it’s been reported that Weaver had a bush while filming this scene, which peeked out of her underwear but was removed in post-production. 45 years later, Alien was re-released in 4K in April of this year, with some of Weaver’s pubic hair digitally restored. While I can’t confirm if this quote is accurate (as no blog has linked back to the original article where Scott allegedly said it), many outlets reported that Scott commented on the return of Weaver’s bush, explaining, “Times were different then. Audiences weren’t ready for a bush like that. It would have paralysed them, put them into a coma.” True or not, papa spilled! A full bush is powerful, and while audiences in the late 70s supposedly weren’t ready to see one on screen, they sure as hell are now.
in bed playing w my bush.. nobody cheating on me… this is the life
— star ֶֶֶֶֶֶָָָָָָ֢֢֢֢֢֢ ༯ (@roziesta) October 6, 2024
On TikTok, love and admiration for full bushes is widespread. Earlier this month, a video by content creator Punk Croc went viral, with them proudly proclaiming that they’re at an age in life where “they only want advice from people with full bushes”. They added, “You can be bald down there; that’s your choice, obviously. Do what you want, but I do not want any advice from you about men, money, or anything.” The creator is clearly being hyperbolic, but this enthusiastic embrace of full bushes has inspired others to talk about theirs online too. From videos of young women discussing the simple pleasure of twirling their pubic hair when it gets long enough to X posts from people complaining about the loss of their bush after shaving: “Fully shaved and I feel so mortified every time I look at myself naked in the mirror. Bush is elite. I hate this so bad… What have I done?” one X user exclaims.
As beauty critic Jessica DeFino found when she polled over 14,000 people for her Guardian beauty column Ask Ugly, the bush is back, with only 15 per cent of respondents saying they’re completely bare. We also saw the return of the bush on the runway earlier this year at the Maison Margiela Artisanal show in January. But Punk Croc’s statement, albeit a joke, has stuck with me: Are people with a full-on bush inherently more trustworthy than those without?
@punk.croc I love bush (not the president)
“Maybe in some messed up way, people believe this to be true because hair is associated with masculinity,” my co-worker George mused. He was met with a chorus of nos and boos from the women on my team, and while I don’t entirely agree with him, I understood his thought process. Historically, women have felt more pressure to remove their body hair because it’s seen as ‘unwomanly’ – and therefore masculine. As Susan Sontag explained in her essay The Double Standard of Ageing, “Masculinity is identified with competence, autonomy, and self-control.” Men are often encouraged to keep their body hair because it reaffirms their masculinity and the qualities listed above. 26-year-old Malcolm* agrees, telling Dazed that “hair is definitely still tied up in questions of masculinity. I’ve been in multiple conversations where (even jokingly) the presence of facial hair is used as a signifier of masculinity, and the absence of it is the absence of masculinity, too. I think male pubic hair is caught up in the same associations for me.” He continues: “In a past relationship, I never shaved because my previous long-term girlfriend expressed a preference for me not to.”
While George’s observation is interesting, it’s not the reason some women and non-binary people claim to trust those with a full bush more. 26-year-old Julia* believes that “a full bush demonstrates an innate sense of character, the ability to think for yourself above all, and to go against decades of toxic conditioning around female beauty standards, which were invented purely for the male gaze.” She continues: “Women who think they’re pruning their bush for themselves – your desires are not your own, hun.” 24-year-old Diane* similarly agrees, reminding me of the infamous 2013 video by former Vine and YouTube heartthrobs Cameron Dallas, JC Caylen, and Nash Grier, where they told their young female audience what guys look for in girls. In the video, the trio spoke passionately (and disgustingly) about how women should shave their entire bodies: no arm hair, no peach fuzz, nothing. While the video was met with intense backlash, their young female audience took their words to heart. “I feel like their comments shaped a lot of people my age. When I was 17 and slept with men, I didn’t even know I was allowed to have a bush. So yeah, a bush to me signals that you are more self-aware.”
When I showed Julia* and Diane’s* comments to a close friend, she said the remarks were not only condescending but sexist: “It’s sexist to think that just because I’ve chosen to shave, it’s because of men. Sometimes it just gets itchy down there and I want to get rid of it.” And it’s true that people have many reasons for shaving their pubic hair, unrelated to men or anyone else’s desires. However, we are sometimes quick to deny that we live in a world where we are socially conditioned to act in accordance with our gender. So, while many of us claim that shaving or not shaving our body hair is our “choice”, it’s often the desires of others that we’ve internalised as our own.
While this article was meant to be lighthearted, based on a TikTok video I jokingly agreed with, it has sparked intense debates among my friends, family, and co-workers about autonomy, sexuality, and desirability. As my friend Georgia proclaimed over DMs, “Hair is never just hair” – hair is everything, and to some, it can even represent different things about a person. And it’s important to note, as one of my editors gently reminded me, that sometimes having these conversations can make people feel worse about themselves. “We should be kinder. Women don’t need more reasons to feel bad about their bodies,” she tells me. “When everything in society tells you that your body is imperfect or ugly, it takes intense strength of character to throw away your razors and your make-up bags. And if you want to do something that will make you privately feel more comfortable or sexually confident, why not? Yeah, it’s technically ‘choice feminism’, but it doesn’t feel particularly helpful, given all the more pressing issues facing women in the world, to police the aesthetics of their genitalia.”
Merkins by Pablo Kuemin10 Images
To clarify: your pubic hair, or lack thereof, does not make you more or less trustworthy (lol). But perhaps it wouldn’t hurt us to question what we do to our bodies and why rather than mindlessly following what’s expected of us. At the end of her column, where she was advising a freshly divorced woman about whether to shave her pubic and bum hair, DeFino confesses that she wished she had questioned her ex-husband’s preference for a shaved pubic region. “When he expressed a preference for a mannequin-smooth pubic mound, I booked six permanent laser-hair removal sessions on the spot. Now, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d leaned into that friction, let myself feel uncomfortable and unattractive, and questioned what this request might mean for our future. Would he have other ideas about how I should look? (He did.) Would I be willing to compromise my body for those preferences, too? (I wasn’t.)” Perhaps we should all make more of an effort to sit with what makes us feel uncomfortable and unattractive – and see what it teaches us about ourselves and what we truly want and desire.
*Names have been changed.
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