American Apparel Gets Hairy

American Apparel put mannequins with visible pubic hair in store windows last week, which is their latest attempt at scandal. Just hairy crotches displayed for all the passersby to see. Bare breasts stopped working, so they’re testing the next boundary—whether we’ve actually moved past the idea that female pubic hair is something that needs to be hidden.

We haven’t. Nike from This Is Jane Wayne crystallized it perfectly: naturalness has become transgressive. Everyone has pubic hair. But we’ve built an entire system around the idea that it should be invisible, and the work of maintaining that invisibility is brutal. Razors, waxing, the constant anxiety about being seen with your body the way it actually grows. And you do it anyway because you’re supposed to, because the alternative is being perceived as gross or not trying hard enough, which is its own kind of terror.

The Instagram angle shows how deliberately we’ve enforced this. They’ll delete your account if you post a photo showing a hint of pubic hair, but breasts are completely fine. Teenage breasts, full adult breasts, it doesn’t matter—those stay. But that hairline? Deleted. The boundary they’ve drawn between what’s acceptable to see is so obviously rooted in what we’ve been trained to think is attractive that it’s almost not worth explaining. It’s the machine’s priorities in one policy.

Someone posted a photo with visible pubic hair and Instagram nuked her account. Full breasts are still fine. That’s where we are.

American Apparel knows it. They’re being provocative on purpose because it still works. A mannequin with a bush is still shocking. Still news. Which means we’re not actually past this at all.