"Shaving pubic hair was a strategy to combat pubic lice before there were medical treatments available. However, the absence of pubic hair was a visible sign of a recent outbreak of lice, which was socially undesirable. In addition, without pubic hair, syphilitic ulcers were visible. Merkins offered camouflage for the ulcers and hid the fact that shaving had been needed in the first place. It’s also possible that for some, merkins were fashion."
Info from the NYT.
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31 comments:
It's to influence pubic opinion.
File this under stuff I didn't need to know.
"Merkins offered camouflage for the ulcers"
So we need a merkin for Schiff?
Or is Schiff the merkin for the Democratic party?
This can go many ways.
But all of them involve a cleanly-shaven Pelosi.
I am Laslo.
But merkins evolved into a way for female sex performers to appear naked but actually cover their sex organs, like the labia in venues like Crazy Horse and the Moulin Rouge.
"Daphne Merkin is a novelist and critic who has made a name for herself with her often-unnerving candor and forthright attitude towards issues of family, religion, and sex."
Among prostitutes? Or was there that much nudity among strangers in the Middle Ages? (Because people who know you have other ways of knowing you have lice.)
What a blessing being born in the last half of the 20th century!
But on point, Caucasian women (generally) shouldn’t entirely shave their pubes. As we migrated off the African continent, along with more visible adaptations like diminished melanin, the exterior construction and appearance of female genitals became highly random and often unattractive. So with the exception of a fortunate few, I’d recommend a covering of perhaps 5mm.
"Make a merkin great again."
Look for a scientific essay after "Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown" analyzing how a merkin is held on.
The obvious approach is put a reversed merkin on the male. There's stuff to attach to there.
Darrell said...
But merkins evolved into a way for female sex performers to appear naked but actually cover their sex organs, like the labia in venues like Crazy Horse and the Moulin Rouge.
So, they were the fore runners of G-strings? That makes sense
You could train lice to hold on to a merkin, I suppose.
So, they were the fore runners of G-strings? That makes sense
G-strings are at least honest. You know you won't be seeing anything. But the merkins sex performers wore had hair woven in fine netting that was stretched over the area. You would never see what you wanted to see. But you still thought you might.
President Merkin Muffley (D)
Am I suppose to believe that a wig on your Wilma would actually fool anyone who got intimate with you? For how long?
"... the exterior construction and appearance of female genitals became highly random and often unattractive."
That was probably a dick.
When I was first going bald, I ordered 6 merkins to place on my head instead of paying for a more expensive 'real looking' wig, or a hair transplant. It was a tricky, jig-saw puzzle like job placing those things on my head just right so that the seams were not visible (or barely visible), and so that there were no gaps in the wrong places.
In college the called me 'crotch'.
I'm a Merkin through and through.
I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.
After seeing dozens of photos of syphalitic copters in boot camp (on the best example, the DI said "how would you like to chow down on that, privates?" The Merkin would need to be the size of a small area rug.
It was nothing It was business/ But it involved some clumsy jerkin'/
So I've come here to rehearse/
My way of workin' round a merkin
Courtesy of an unfortunately named 8th grade math teacher, I knew what a merkin was long before the internet age. Confirmed the rumors spread by classmates in the compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, an update on which: I never realized, as a kid, how annoying the microscopic text was, nor did I grasp immediately what was annoying about it. With my then keen eyes, it seemed almost magical to reveal the explanations with the included magnifying glass. Now that I'm older and my eyes don't work as well, I kinda hate the thing. How indeed could Gore Vidal stand it. He must have bought it young.
I suspect there was a huge class divide in the early European Merkin use.
Would you wear it during a day in the fields or put it on after?
And I'm assuming well before electricity and porn, with one room housing the norm, sex was generally a dark and under the covers operation anyway, especially as one got older.
Accordingly, to the extent merkin use reached the lower classes, I think its purpose would be more tactile then visual.
TMI. A lot of that going around these days.
Which retired newsbabe got pubic lice from the great Mayor John Lindsay ?
Not a Jeopardy question.
Laslo: "all of them involve a cleanly-shaven Pelosi."
You can't show that on TV!
Quaestor: My favorite movie ever! It never gets old.
Firestone Brewing makes (or used to make) a brew called Velvet Merkin. It tastes like stout oatmeal.
" Or was there that much nudity among strangers in the Middle Ages?"
Consider public bathing, an extension of the Roman baths.
Until the church learned about the prostitution and closed them down. Too much competition, I guess.
I had no idea about it growing up watching Merkin Mindy.
"...the exterior construction and appearance of female genitals became highly random and often unattractive."
To you, maybe. (I find it dismaying that women today are seeking surgery to reduce their labia minora to such a state that they are barely--or not-at-all--evident.)
Good point, walter. I wonder what she was hiding? She did seem to smile a lot.
Angela Merkel.
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