To say 50 Shades of Grey was a bad movie would be doing a disservice to the word “bad.” I refuse to even consider using a rhyming variation on the title because it was not, in fact, 50 shades of anything. It was one shade of awful–one sad, bland, exhausting shade of lifeless. At best, it was a sad desk lunch with a squirt of knockoff hot sauce to dip it in. However, there was one good thing about it: the fact that Dakota Johnson, who plays Anastasia Steele, had pubic hair.
Given that Anastasia is supposed to be a mousy, young, inexperienced stereotype of a virgin, particularly in juxtaposition with Jamie Dornan‘s (intended, albeit not achieved) Christian Grey, nobody would have batted an eye had she been totally waxed. While it would not have been realistic in reality for a person who has never had sex nor anything remotely related to it to constantly be going for a full-Brazilian wax, it would nevertheless certainly go along with the porn industry and Hollywood’s (often creepy) idealization of the very-young, smooth, hairless virgin.
There are multiple flashes of Anastasia’s pubic hair during the film in between strategically plotted out shots where her knees or his head blocks her pubic area. Though this doesn’t exactly make up for the fact that it’s a terrible movie with zero plot, infinite dead eyes, and no chemistry between Dakota Johnson and the scruffy hand towel she was given as a costar, it at least means that pubic hair is finally becoming mainstream again. Not just a landing strip or a tiny triangle, but what appeared to be a full-bush Brazilian.
While 50 Shades Of Grey certainly won’t be winning any awards or going down in history as a work of genius, it is breaking a specific societal barrier that has been established for entirely too long. So often, we see exclusively women with fully-waxed pubic mons, as though that is the only acceptable form of “maintenance.” This is obviously a-okay if that is each individual woman’s choice of grooming, but there’s a huge stigma about the mere idea of letting it grow. By putting a visible amount of pubic hair into a film that is currently being flocked into–whether it’s by fans who genuinely find it appealing or hate-watchers just there to giggle–director Sam Taylor-Johnson is presenting quiet defiance to a double standard that has plagued women in film and fashion for the past two decades. Now, if only the W Magazine photos had featured Dakota’s pubic hair, we could have killed double the mainstream birds with one lush stone.
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