We like a real bush Did you understand, Kim Kardashian?

Here we go again. Kim Kardashian drops another product with medium-to-high shock value, and we fall for it like pears into the pear collectors’ net. Headlines upon headlines, endless debates, all for products designed to reinforce the personal branding of the smartest digital entrepreneur of the last 20 years. After the push-up bra with fake nipples we already talked about, here she comes again, this time with a kind of thong (or g-string?) featuring fake hair on the front. Obviously available in different colorways, obviously synthetic, obviously by Skims and announced through a super catchy campaign, polished down to the last detail. The claim? “The Ultimate Bush. With our daring new Faux Hair Panty, your carpet can be whatever color you want it to be.”

Kim Kardashian’s new panties and why they bother us

The hairy panties aren’t exactly a new idea. It was 1994, and a young Carla Bruni, curls framing her angelic face, walked the runway for Vivienne Westwood wearing a thong with a fur patch on the front, perfectly matching her coat. The collection was called “On Liberty,” exploring freedom of body and mind, expressed through fashion and, naturally, through the ever-politicized female body. Freedom and rebellion against standards are certainly not what Kim Kardashian is talking about here. She has always used her image and influence to launch trends that go hand in hand with the oppression of women’s bodies, diet culture, and the overuse of plastic surgery. Nothing remotely underground, from appetite-suppressing products to compressed, restricted bodies where the fake and synthetic win over the real, which must be hidden beneath a cleaned-up, polished, and finally acceptable image. There’s no point in stressing the hypocrisy of it all. In a world screaming that we must be pure, smooth, clean, virginal, youthful, we’re now putting a toupee on our pubic hair because real bush still - and sadly - grosses us out too much.

Will they actually sell? That’s not the point

Who’s going to buy them? Probably no one, or just a few. The die-hard fans of Miss Kardashian and maybe some content creators who want to take interesting photos for their feeds without the fear of getting banned. Maybe they’ll be used in magazine photo shoots. And then? That’s it. It’s just another gimmick - a cheap one, not exactly carrying an uplifting or empowering message - to get the brand’s name circulating, drive traffic to the online shop, and keep the buzz alive. Do you feel fooled yet?