Hi Everyone,
Happy hump day and thanks so much for reading the ADULT SEX ED newsletter!
This is a weekly newsletter from me, Dani Faith Leonard, a comedian and film producer (you can follow me on instagram). It’s an extension of the live comedy show ADULT SEX ED that I’ve hosted since 2018. The show and this newsletter is about plugging the holes in our education as adults (if you want to know more, here’s a description on substack).
Ready to get a little smarter? Okay, let’s go!
Dani
P.S. The next ADULT SEX ED live show is NEXT WEEK in New York City, on June 22nd at 7PM at the Midnight Theatre! Special guests include Dylan Adler, Katie Haller, & Gabe Mollica — you won’t want to miss it! GET TICKETS.
My favorite “lesson” that I’ve explored and performed for the live show has always been The History of the Merkin. It’s an audience favorite too — my friends and fans of the show have been sending me merkin-related facts ever since I performed this segment back in 2019. I welcome your strange DMs, always.
What is a merkin? In layman’s terms, it’s a vagina wig. More accurately, it’s an artificial covering of hair for the pubic area. A crotch toupee.
Originally, I researched merkins for a movie-themed Adult Sex Ed show. I love movies (I’ve produced them for a decade) and exploring how sex scenes have impacted us is a passion of mine. As it turns out, merkins have a long history that pre-dates the invention of film by about 2,000 years. Merkins can be short or long, but here’s a brief history:
ASPIRATIONAL MERKINS
At first, merkins were aspirational. Cleopatra was supposedly known for her long, luxurious pubic hair, which she proudly wore brushed and oiled. At the time, poor people were forced to shave due to a fear of pubic lice, especially sex workers. People wore merkins to cover up their bits and look rich.
This continued throughout history. The Oxford Companion to the Body dates pubic wigs to the 1450s. Women would shave their pubic hair for personal hygiene and sex workers would also wear merkins to cover up signs of disease, like syphilis. Women of high society continued to wear merkins as a sign of health and affluence (even though they shaved too, tired of getting lice from their philandering husbands).
In the 15th century, synthetic hair wasn’t invented yet, so merkins were made from horse hair or goat hair, or even human hair stolen from the grave. Imagine walking around, wearing a ghost’s pubes?
STAGE AND SCREEN
Like enormous egos and lip injections, merkins are now most associated with the stage and screen. In Shakespeare’s time, women were not allowed on the stage, so men wore merkins to cover up their junk and play female parts.
Full-frontal nudity in commercial movies and plays didn’t hit its stride until the 60s and once pube trends shifted in the 90s, actors started wigging it. Sometimes, actors wear merkins to portray a specific time period when people were more hairy. Merkins can also be worn, especially by actresses, to avoid exposure since "full-frontal" could lead to a more restrictive MPAA rating.
MERKINS JUST FOR FUN
Merkins are also used as a fun erotic accessory, especially in drag. If you search on Etsy, you’ll find plenty of styles and colors. Will merkins ever become as mainstream as they were in Cleopatra’s time? Who knows! Pubic trends chance over time and maybe we’ll get stylish in a few years. For those of us who zapped our bits with lasers, we’ll be forced to wig it. For now, I’ll just have to make more movies.
Here’s a clip from the merkin lesson at a 2022 Adult Sex Ed show:
Want to see more? Come to the live show on the 22nd in NYC!
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