Kim Kardashian has probably profited from any recent trend you can think of — and nipples peeking through shirts are no different.

This ubiquitous phenomenon gained extra traction with the Free the Nipple movement in 2014, which championed the desexualization of women’s bodies by women shedding bras and letting the natural shape of their chests show.

So, when Kardashian’s shapewear brand, SKIMS, dropped a bra with built-in nipples that appear through tops in late 2023, it fit her brand while still causing a bit of a stir. However, the stir wasn’t about the nipple bras; it was a result of the marketing campaign.

Kardashian chose to jokingly market the bras as a solution to melting ice sheets and rising temperatures due to climate change — a major miss, considering Kardashian had the seventh-highest private jet carbon emissions in 2022. She’s burning the atmosphere and making money from it, for crying out loud!

Now, SKIMS is back at it again, but this time, they’ve gone lower.

Women are beginning to talk publicly about embracing their body hair, specifically their pubic hair, in defiance of the expectation that women must be hairless to be desirable. Like a corporation co-opting a trending meme for a half-baked X post, SKIMS released its “Ultimate Bush” line of faux hair micro string thongs Oct. 14.

For the curtains to match the drapes, the thongs come in four different hair colors that can be paired with three different skin tones for the mesh. It was a successful stunt, as the thongs are currently sold out, but if you’re reading this with the intention of buying one, don’t worry, there’s a waiting list you can join in the meantime.

Nothing frustrates me more than a woman’s body being a piece of fashion — not the clothes on the body, but the body itself. The weight and the shape of women’s bodies go in and out of fashion like trends: heroin chic, slim-thick and BBLs, to name a few.

But trends come and go, and the body is still there, operating the same as it always does: It gains and loses weight; it gains wrinkles and freckles and moles; and it grows and sheds hair. And yet, there’s always a body that’s in style.

I’ve found that, as I’ve gotten older, I see and know more people who make decisions about their body hair, whether they remove it or not. I am aware of and grateful for the declining stigmas around women’s natural bodies in this time compared to the past 30 years. Arbitrary boundaries and expectations are becoming easier to play with and even break altogether.

Nevertheless, we’re now in a time where women are trying to add to their bodies after subtracting — they’re replacing what’s there with what they believe should be there. And I blame Kim Kardashian.

Kardashian became synonymous with body-altering plastic surgery as early as 2007, rejecting authenticity for artificiality in both her body and persona thanks to the unbelievably addictive television slop that is “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” That being said, she also has an impressive knack for knowing what’s about to get big in pop culture in the worst way possible.

Women of color, specifically Black women, began to publicly celebrate their natural bodies despite the intersectional oppression that plagued their features for generations as liberalism began to dominate American pop culture at the start of Barack Obama’s first presidential term. Lo and behold, Kim Kardashian appears with bigger lips, darker skin and a bigger butt fit into clothing made popular by women of color.

As a “solutions-oriented brand,” I can’t help but wonder what problem SKIMS is solving with the thongs other than briefly stunting Kardashian’s insatiable greed. Her shapewear brand is all about temporarily augmenting the body to achieve a desired look, something many women can relate to, but Kardashian didn’t pioneer shapewear; she pioneered dissatisfaction with the natural body.

The faux hair isn’t a celebration of women’s bodies; it’s a strategic response to natural features swinging back into favor after a decade dominated by lip injections and BBLs. It’s a gimmick designed solely to profit from an attempt to desexualize women’s bodies, just like the nipple bra that preceded it.

Products like Kardashian’s send the message that even naturalness is a performance for women, that their bodies are always in a state of potential profit: Being a woman isn’t being a human; it’s being a moneypot, an object to be monetized.

Nothing Kardashian has done in the eyes of the public is sincere, and even if it were, it was monetized. Do what you want with your body. Just don’t let her do what she wants with your money.

Anna Jordan is a junior writing about pop culture controversies in her column, “Chronically Online,” which runs every other Thursday. She is also an arts and entertainment editor at the Daily Trojan.