We come bearing five words you never thought you’d hear together, but that Gen Z has made go viral nonetheless: full bush in a bikini.
In a TikTok video posted in early January, Gen Z artist Sujindah intones those words ― practically screams them ― at the viewer: “Full bush in a bikini!” they say excitedly. “Full. Bush. In. A. Bikini.”
The video, which has over 15.4 million views, was inspired by an Etsy review Sujindah saw a woman leave for a homemade bikini. In the review, the woman included a photo of herself wearing the swimsuit, with tufts of pubic hair coming out from the sides.
To forgo shaving, then casually drop a photo of your pubes on Etsy ― a site where stay-at-home moms and indie artisans sell knit hats and bespoke Taylor Swift friendship bracelets ― felt almost revolutionary to Sujindah.
“I got radicalized by that Etsy review, for real!” they say in the TikTok, without posting the Etsy review or the woman’s username, lest they blow up the woman’s spot.
The video struck a nerve for many women on TikTok, which didn’t surprise Sujindah.
“I think women are fed up,” the artist told HuffPost in an email interview. “Life under capitalism keeps getting harder, and we still have to dedicate time to shave or invest in monthly, painful hair removal treatments,” they said. “Why? To be considered appealing? To whom? To what an unevolved man wants? To accept the misogyny that gets recycled down from our mothers and peers?”
While Sujindah knows that feminism means women can choose to do whatever they want with body hair, they also believe “it’s important we examine the context” of what we collectively consider beautiful.
In the pictures of women’s bodies that I fell in love with on Tumblr from [the ’70s], women had bushes, so it was never something I felt needed to change in myself.
- Jessie Patrick-Hooper, a Gen Z-er who embraces body hair
They’re not the only Gen Z-er who feels that way. Many say they’re kind of over manicuring everything down there, whether it’s through waxing, shaving or lasering it away. Many women in the age bracket say they’re more than happy with a little happy trail, visible armpit fuzz or an unkempt bikini line.
“I’ve always preferred to keep all of my body hair, even since I was young. It just feels beautiful to me,” said Jessie Patrick-Hooper, a 24-year-old who also posted about going “full bush in a bikini” on TikTok.
“I enjoy my soft female human animal body,” she told HuffPost. “Without my hair I don’t really feel connected to a more wild side of myself that I’m always trying to get closer to.”
It probably helps that Patrick-Hopper grew up browsing the feminist side of Tumblr, at a time when young women on the photo-centric blogging site were deep in the throes of a 1970s aesthetic obsession. In that era, women’s dress and body hair became the sites of cultural battles as part of the emerging second wave feminist movement.
“In the pictures of women’s bodies that I fell in love with on Tumblr, women had bushes, so it was never something I felt needed to change in myself,” she said.
It helped, too, that pop stars and even supermodels that people her age grew up seeing often eschewed shaving: Singer Miley Cyrus casually showed armpit hair at award shows, and model Emily Ratajkowski wrote a personal essay in Harper’s Bazaar that touched on the inherent feminism of doing whatever you want with your body hair.
Other Gen Z women on TikTok have shared what it’s really like to go “full bush in a bikini” in public, including Cherry, a 26-year-old content creator and model who asked to use her first name only in this piece to protect her privacy.
“This is what it’s like as a hairy girl who doesn’t shave to go to a European spa,” Cherry said in a TikTok video.
As she walks around the outdoor spa, Cherry admits that a few years ago she “would have been mortified to wear [her] bathing suit with an unshaved bikini line, hairy legs and no pedicure” in front of groups of strangers. Now, it’s no big thing.
The only real issue she had was a creeper who sneakily tried to take her picture, which another guest alerted her about.
“Besides that, it’s never been an issue in Europe or the U.S.,” Cherry told HuffPost. “Once I realized that no one cares, then I stopped being afraid of it. The hair sticks out the sides, and I don’t try to hide it. It is what it is.”
She, like some women who purposely don’t shave, feels like shaving it all off infantilizes her body: For her, an entirely hairless body brings to mind a prepubescent girl.
“The only women who are naturally totally body-hairless are under 12,” Cherry said. “I truly believe that shaving is supposed to make us seem youthful to men, and that’s disgusting. There’s really nothing ‘feminine’ about being hairless.”