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Kim Kardashian’s clothes model, Skims, has been no stranger to a controversial marketing campaign. Over the previous few years, Skims has repeatedly made headlines for releasing divisive merchandise such because the nipple bra and hip-enhancing shorts.
Its newest launch isn’t any exception. Final week, the model introduced the discharge of an A$70 fake hair micro thong, out there in twelve completely different coloration and hair texture variations. The product has rightly been recognized as a merkin—a pubic wig, or hairpiece for the pubic space.
Whereas this controversial thong has been launched as a part of a Nineteen Seventies-themed marketing campaign, the historical past of the merkin dates a lot additional again.
Venereal illness
The merkin is believed to have originated within the Early Trendy interval in Europe. The Oxford Companion to the Physique dates its debut to 1450, although its actual origin stays contested.
What is thought for sure, nonetheless, is the perform of this curious piece of clothes. By the tip of the fifteenth century, a significant syphilis epidemic had swept Europe. The preliminary outbreak grew to become often known as the “Great Pox.” It led to widespread demise and disfigurement, earlier than turning into much less virulent in later centuries.
As historian Jon Arrizabalaga and colleagues clarify: “In some cases, the lips, nose or eyes were eaten away, or on others the whole of the sexual organs.”
Pubic wigs grew to become a sensible technique to conceal indicators of the illness across the genital space. In addition to hiding syphilitic sores, merkins may assist to masks the scent of rotting flesh by including a lavender-scented powder to the fabric.
It has been estimated that by the 18th century, one in 5 Londoners suffered from syphilitic an infection. Admission data of London’s hospitals and workhouse infirmaries present syphilis was notably rife amongst younger, impoverished and principally single girls, who used business intercourse to assist themselves.
With no efficient treatment for the illness discovered till the start of the twentieth century, it’s hardly stunning merkins have been used to hide undesirable signs.
Pubic lice
Pubic wigs additionally proved helpful for stopping the unfold of pubic lice. England and France have been battling rampant infestations of lice nicely into the seventeenth century. Shaving one’s pubic hair was, understandably, a confirmed methodology to forestall infestation.
Nevertheless, this hairless look carried a destructive stigma, because it was related to the presence of illness and prolific engagement with vice.
Pubic wigs provided an answer to this perverse magnificence paradox of the time, permitting girls to seem unshaven (thus, wholesome and clear) whereas being shaven to forestall infestation and unfold of lice. The wigs may very well be boiled and even baked after use to guarantee sterilization.
Appearances in literature
Though cultural consciousness clearly predates it, the primary recorded use of the time period “merkin” comes from John Taylor’s Observations and Journey, revealed in 1617. It options amongst a satirical checklist of unique and indulgent imports—reminiscent of “apes, monkeys, merkins, marmosets”—suggesting it was already acknowledged as a risqué commodity related to self-importance and extra.
The merkin continued to seem throughout a variety of literature from the seventeenth century, notably in bawdy items of labor, reminiscent of the next 1661 poem: “He laid her on the ground/His Spirits fell a ferking/Her Zeal was in a sound/He edified her Merkin.”
Its use is mostly related to intercourse employees, although it’s believable rich people would even have adorned themselves with merkins to protect the looks of health and beauty.
Powdered wigs have been adopted by the Aristocracy within the 18th century to hide hair loss and deformities that resulted from syphilis, so it isn’t a stretch to think about merkins would have been adopted as nicely.
By 1786, the time period “merkin” had entered the formal lexicon, outlined in Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue as “counterfeit hair for women’s privy parts.”
Merkins in the present day
As public well being improved and societal attitudes in the direction of hygiene modified, merkins largely fell out of vogue.
By the late nineteenth century, that they had principally pale into obscurity and survived solely as a unusual historic footnote. One instance is the well-known faux-Victorian {photograph} of a supposed merkin salesman peddling his show case of pubic wigs, which is circulating as if it have been a real nineteenth century picture.
Whereas the Skims micro thong could seem like a cheeky novelty, the merkin itself boasts a centuries-long historical past—evolving from a sensible accent to a provocative vogue assertion in the present day.
The Skims line of “full bush” thongs have been shortly offered out quickly after they have been introduced. Whereas the corporate hasn’t made the intention behind the product clear, its virality has definitely sparked a broader dialog about physique hair politics.
In some ways, even these cultural conversations mirror these from centuries prior. The merkin’s very existence is proof that ladies’s physique hair has, for a whole lot of years, doubled as a potent image of well being, sexuality, vogue and autonomy.
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Skims has put merkins again on the style map. This is a quick (and furry) historical past of the pubic wig (2025, October 21)
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