“Pineapple!,” my friend once whispered to me urgently as we stood among a group of strangers at a party in London. It was our code word, and in this instance she was telling me that my pastie had come loose and the outline of a small erect nipple could be seen through my satin dress. I rushed to the bathroom to re-adjust my outfit and protect my modesty. The flesh-colored sticker meant to control and flatten my nips had lost its stickiness, so I licked the underside, re-applied it, and prayed it would stay in place for the rest of the evening.
Ten years later, the reality-TV star turned mogul Kim Kardashian, through her lingerie-and-basics line, Skims, has brought out a new bra with fake nipples built into it, to give you the exact look we’ve all been taking great pains to avoid. The whiplash is akin to what everyone in Mean Girls must have felt when Regina George decided to strut around North Shore High in a shirt with chest holes cut out of it. And, like in Mean Girls, people have seemingly embraced the trend without skipping a beat.
