‘I Only Want Advice From People With A Full Bush’: The Power Of Pubic Hair

Words: Kitty Lloyd

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Bianca Censori arrived at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards adorned in an ensemble designed by Yeezy, the fashion house owned by her husband and date for the night, Kanye West. Following a brief exchange between the couple on the red carpet, Bianca dropped her dramatically oversized black fur coat to reveal a skin-tight, sheer slip dress – her naked body on display to the onslaught of flashing cameras.

The moment triggered a wave of concern among internet spectators. Many were worried for Bianca’s safety, categorising the whole ordeal as a humiliation ritual at the hands of her husband. But amid the discourse, a consensus emerged: what was missing from Bianca’s look? Bush. Tens of thousands of TikTok comments have all confirmed that bush would have replaced concern and outrage with interest, apathy, and ‘legend status’. To think, a tiny patch of hair wields such cultural power that it could calm a raging dialogue on domestic abuse, coercive control and volatile relationships.

The saga has revealed the tangled knot of unspoken politics that shroud body hair. Particularly at this current moment - bush has quickly become one of the internet’s talked about topics after falling from cultural favour nearly 25 years ago. Best seen in the rising world of #bushtok, Gen Z has become enamoured with pubic hair and all it represents. Specifically on women.
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Whilst bush might feel radical in 2025, a bare mons pubis is a relatively modern invention. Body hair more generally has undoubtedly been instilled with different cultural and political meanings throughout time but the popularity of a hairless pubic area is still new. There are exceptions, of course. Ancient Egyptian women ‘shaved’ their pubic hair with pumice stones, Ayurvedic societies created depilatory pastes and the Ancient Romans singed off hair with fire. But overall the ‘Brazilian’ bikini look only became ‘normal’ in the late 90s and early 00s.

It was seven Brazilian siblings (the J sisters) who brought the bikini wax to America, beckoning a cohort of glamorous women to Manhattan waxing tables, including the likes of Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Kimora Lee. The J sisters claim it was the tropical weather of their homeland that inspired the look, telling Vanity Fair: “You have to be in a tropical mind-set. You can be sexy anytime, all the time.” But across America, another force would help cement the no pubes look as a bonafide trend. The arrival of this new beauty treatment on American shores coincided with the rapidly changing porn industry, courtesy of at-home entertainment and the burgeoning internet. Whilst the lack of body hair in porn tended to serve a practical purpose (increasing visibility of the sex acts), porn’s increased accessibility caused the aesthetics of the genre to trickle down to the mainstream and become synonymous with feminine sexiness. 

“Ironically, an ‘untamed’ bush is actually a historically accurate expression of the pre-modern woman that trad-conservatives so desperately want.”

By 2003 onwards, a lack of bush would define the majority of the Playboy centrefolds and by the 2010s, the hyper-polished images of social media would serve to normalise a lack of pubic hair completely. In 2013, photographer Petra Collins claimed her Instagram account was deleted after she uploaded a highly filtered photograph of her crotch with pubic hair visibly peeking out from her underwear. The post was apparently reported for ‘violating community guidelines’, with Petra reported to have received comments that called her “horrible” and “disgusting”.

The decline of bush from the public consciousness during this time is perhaps best illustrated by the slew of media attention actress Gabby Hoffman received after a full-frontal nude scene in HBO’s Girls. Whilst Girls was no stranger to boundary-pushing nakedness, the hair on Hoffman’s white, cis, slender body was still met with shock even in liberal media. Writer Kristen Iversen titled her review of the episode for BK Mag: “That’s a lot of pubic hair”, whilst Salon would later discuss the novelty of Hoffman’s bush with her Transparent co-stars. This type of reaction can be explained by the numerous studies from this time that reported women believed pubic hair to be ‘unfeminine’, ‘dirty’, and overall, at odds with socially acceptable femininity.

11 years on from Hoffman’s iconic nude scene, bush appears to be back. In Jessica DeFino’s The Review of Beauty, almost 30% of her 14,000 readers reported donning a full bush. In a comparative study from 2017, this rate sat around 10%. Heralded by the merkins on Maison Margelia’s 2024 runway, bush has been finding itself the centre of attention with Gen Z TikTok users. In one video, creator @sujindah begins by chanting “full bush in a bikini” before discussing an Etsy review for a bikini that radicalised their personal beauty standards. The comment section sees people calling for a “full bush summer 2025” whilst other TikTok users attribute this original TikTok as having radicalised their FYP.

Today’s fixation with bush isn't just a result of the decline in pubic hair grooming—it's a full-fledged veneration of bush that feels like ungroomed pubic hair has become some sort of shorthand for mystical power and wisdom. This is perhaps best embodied by a sentiment made famous by @CheesyDiablo: “I’m at an age where I only want advice from people with a full bush”. Bush is getting rebranded as a sign of self-actualisation and coolness after decades being understood as uncouth and unsexy by the mainstream. 

Bush’s return has taken root amidst a fasco-conservative movement that’s obsessed with pronatalist, traditionalist ideas of gender and sexuality. Ironically, an ‘untamed’ bush is actually a historically accurate

expression of the pre-modern woman that trad-conservatives so desperately want. But perhaps accuracy was never as much of an interest as control and power. From everyday men claiming hairlessness for women just ‘makes more sense’ in vox pop interviews to the worrying rise of “your body, my choice” in the wake of Trump’s re-election, women’s bodies remain as policed as ever.

In TikToks of women in public places that are captioned “no one here knows I'm full bush in a thong right now”, bush operates as a way for individuals to retain a sense of bodily autonomy in a culture that’s constantly seeking to repossess it. Even when maybe adhering to a more conventional expression of femininity, like wearing traditionally sexy underwear, a full bush affords cis women the chance to subvert gender optics and claim a sense of personal control and power - even just secretly to oneself.

Bush only retains this power when it’s the result of freedom, not rigid expectations. At this current moment, #Bushtok is undoubtedly dominated by cis women, putting an increased emphasis on genitalia in a time when trans persecution and discrimination continues to soar. It’s vital, then, to remember that full bush represents more than hair and much more than gender. It’s the chance to maintain control over our own bodies and our expression of self.