Thighbrows: Social media trend led by Kardashians is latest body part women are asked to worry about

Critics have suggested that it’s just another way of policing women’s bodies

(Instagram/Khloe Kardashian)

"Hot dog legs" and "thigh gaps" may have been the tedious running theme on social media for summer 2015, but thighbrows - a "set of folds that frames the top of your thigh and separates leg from butt" according to Elle - is something new altogether.

While the Kardashian clan usually has the monopoly on every new Instagram trend, Rihanna, Beyonce and Nicki Minjaj have also reportedly getting involved.

But although the hashtag (which also has its own dedicated Instagram account with a whopping total of five images) was immediately hailed by some as a body-positive notion, others have suggested that it’s just another way of policing women’s bodies.

Courtney Marshall, a Women’s Studies professor at the University of New Hampshire, told the Daily Dot that she failed to see how it could be called a body-positive trend when it required a high-cut bathing suit.

"It also seems to require a flat belly, so that line about it being achievable for anyone seems fishy," she said.

Social media tends to throw out a new part of the body for women to hate every few months. At the beginning of this year it was the mons pubis, which came into the spotlight thanks to Sports Illustrated cover model Hannah Davis.

This resulted in a think piece asking if the mons pubis – the part of the body just above the labia – was the “new thigh gap”, where it was pointed out that there is a surgical procedure aimed at “correcting” that area for “any woman unhappy with its size, shape or excess skin".