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What would ultra-high-end sex toys look like?
For influencer and entrepreneur Emily Oberg, they would probably look a lot like her newest venture, Sensual Sport, a sexual wellness brand that launched last month with a vibrator, lubricant and mouth spray. All three items come in minimal, discreet packaging, with advertisements inspired by Irving Penn still lifes and vintage copies of French adult-entertainment magazine Lui. “The visual identity of the brand is luxury and highbrow,” says Oberg. “It feels and looks expensive, and the products reflect that as well. I feel women, like me, who want the products they buy to have this sentiment, will want to buy Sensual Sport.”
Oberg understands luxury. She made her name posting images of casual affluence — Jackie O in jeans, a woman wearing a sweatshirt and carrying a Birkin bag — and then created a lifestyle brand called Sporty Rich with products mirroring this aesthetic. Sensual Sport does the same thing, transforming items traditionally considered lowbrow into covetable goods by associating them with a luxury name and look.
Sexual wellness brands have been borrowing visual cues from luxury markets, particularly beauty, since the category took off in the late 2010s and peaked in popularity during Covid. Maude, Dame, Hanx and various other brands offered products with sleek graphics, monochromatic colour palettes and sculptural shapes; a marked change to the crude shapes and garish colours that previously dominated the intimacy market. But in a marketplace that is increasingly conservative when it comes to the sexual health and wellness of women and people of diverse genders, aligning with luxury and culture is becoming more important than ever.
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The sexual wellness industry emerged in an era when topics like consent, queer sexuality and female pleasure were being discussed in the media with unprecedented openness. However, the climate has since shifted — particularly in the US, where many emerging sexual wellness brands were founded and still operate. The overturning of Roe vs Wade, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion; the rollback on FACE Act enforcement, which protected access to reproductive healthcare; and the ban on transwomen taking part in female sports are just a few examples of the shift away from a more inclusive approach to sexuality. The New York Times recently reported that the use of words like “sex”, “women” and “people + uterus”, are discouraged in the federal government. Meanwhile, as discussed a little later, Big Tech’s censorship of topics related to female health and sexual wellness is fiercer than ever.
Maude launched in 2018 with inclusive, design-driven products, and by 2023 it had become the first sexual wellness brand to be stocked in Sephora, while partnering with high-end retailers like Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue. But founder Éva Goicochea says the tide is turning. “While Gen Z and younger millennials are more open about sexual health, the broader political climate continues to impose restrictions — particularly around reproductive rights, sex education and access to intimate wellness products,” she says.
In this environment, sexual wellness brands must find new ways to make themselves palatable to a wide audience. Can associating their products with those that already have cultural prestige, like designer fashion and fine art, create a sense of desirability that transcends stigma?
Dispelling the squeamishness
Maude has embarked on a number of collaborations aimed at elevating its products to the same realm as high fashion, and even high art. On Valentine’s Day of this year, the brand collaborated with Stella McCartney on a campaign that paired Maude’s vibrators with McCartney’s Falabella and Ryder bags, and they even appeared on the runway of McCartney’s Autumn/Winter 2025 show.
In 2023, Maude’s Vibe personal massager and Spot vibrator were put on display at the ‘Modern Sex: 100 Years of Design and Decency’ exhibition in Miami’s Museum of Sex, to only be featured once again in October 2024 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs exhibition ‘Private Lives: From the Bedroom to Social Media’.
“Through strategic partnerships and a long-term vision, we’re thinking beyond the next four years, ensuring that sexual wellness becomes a permanent part of the broader conversation around well-being,” says Goicochea. “Our collaborations with institutions like the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the Louvre and the Museum of Sex cement intimacy as a cultural and historical touchpoint, not just a category relegated to the margins.”
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While Goicochea has tried to dispel the squeamishness around intimacy products through high-end partnerships, Maude’s price point has remained relatively accessible. The same goes for Sensual Sport, which sells all of its products for under $100, despite being designed for customers who wouldn’t hesitate to buy a $300 T-shirt. The aim of these brands is not to make sexual wellness a luxury good, but to appeal to an aspirational audience by suggesting that their products, like fine art and designer fashion, are covetable; objects they should be proud of owning rather than hiding away in a drawer. As Goicochea says, “I wanted Maude to be warm, approachable and elevated — removing stigma while maintaining a sense of sophistication [because] this balance allows us to reach a broader audience.”
According to Penny Coy, SVP of merchandising at Ulta Beauty, this kind of approach is working. “As the [intimate wellness] space evolves, we’re seeing intimacy and luxury come together in powerful ways — through design, innovation and elevated selfcare experiences,” Coy says. “It’s important to us that our family of brands bring a modern, understated design, alongside new advanced solutions, allowing guests to shop these products as seamlessly as they would across skincare or haircare.”
Navigating Big Tech censorship
The sexual wellness product market was valued at $32.9 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $65.1 billion by the end of 2034, according to Transparency Market Research. Yet, for many brands, promoting their products feels like an increasingly complex problem. If careful word choice and packaging got them on the shelf before, these brands should now find new ways of making themselves seen.
Nowhere is the shift towards conservatism more keenly felt than in the difficulty sexual wellness brands face advertising on Big Tech platforms.
This February, the Center for Intimacy Justice published a study that revealed Google rejected 66 per cent of ads by brands and creators focusing on women’s reproductive and sexual health; TikTok rejected 48 per cent; and Meta 84 per cent. Content that mentions “vagina” or “menopause” across Meta platforms is more likely to be flagged as sexually explicit and removed, despite its advertising guidelines specifically mentioning men’s health issues like “erectile dysfunction” as an approved category.
“We’ve been advised to not talk about certain women’s health topics — including menopause symptoms and sexual health — on organic social media as they carry the risk of restriction of our account. This censorship has major implications beyond just our messaging,” says Dr Sarah Welsh, co-founder of Hanx. “Venture capital firms can feel uneasy about backing women’s health brands, as they know we struggle with reaching target audiences via digital advertising. It also makes it incredibly difficult to secure and keep competitive shelf space in high street retailers, when our social media posts announcing that we’re in stock don’t reach customers.”
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Asked for comment, Meta responded that according to to its community standards, posts about women’s sexual health are allowed, unless they contain sexual imagery or nudity, “advertisers can run ads that promote sexual health, wellness and reproductive products and services. However, as a global company, we need to take into account the wide array of people who see ads across our technologies to avoid potential negative experiences. While ads that address social issues or promote prescription drugs need to be authorized by Meta before they can run. According to the company, if brands were blocked, it was because they were believed to violate these policies, which states: “Ads promoting sexual and reproductive health products or services, such as contraception and family planning, must be targeted to people 18 years or older and must not focus on sexual pleasure.”
In some cases, it’s understandable why Meta might perceive an image as a violation of its policies— such as Sensual Sport’s image of a naked torso leading this article. In other cases, however, the reasoning is less clear. Take, for example, how Evvy, after having ads rejected for discussing topics like vaginal symptoms or STIs, has resorted to using censor-friendly terms like “seggs” for “sex” or the cat emoji in place of “vagina” to navigate advertising restrictions. Similarly, sexual educator Leeza Mangaldas had an image removed that showed her partially exposed back alongside text describing her mission to promote consensual sex. At the same time, ads that do not address sexual wellness but are far more revealing—such as Calvin Klein’s recent Bad Bunny campaign—or brands promoting Viagra and similar male sexual wellness products do not, according to the Center’s report, face the same restrictions.
Similarly, TikTok responded that all content is subject to removal if it does not adhere to the company’s community guidelines, which are in place to protect its users. Without specific examples of the content removed, TikTok said it could not offer definitive answers as to why that content might have been deleted, but it notes that the Centre for Intimacy Justice’s report has a small sample (only 146 respondents total, with 14 respondents for Meta) and argues that some of the findings are subjective. Asked for comment, Google echoed that it places bans on certain health and wellness ads for all genders due to age or location restrictions, but notes that as recently as last autumn, it updated its policies to allow for products such as personal grooming tools, personal lubricants and certain sexual health medications in more countries.
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Still, brands are feeling the impact of these restrictions and are finding ways to market themselves away from these platforms. Oberg is launching a more explicitly risqué campaign on OnlyFans. Alexandra Fine, CEO of Dame, says the brand has had to “get creative” by launching a campaign with mobile billboards rolling through New York, Miami and Dallas that show pictures of its products alongside the tagline “She’s Coming”.
Sexual and reproductive health brand Wisp addressed censorship directly last summer when it pasted posters around Downtown New York that read: “Get vaginal care faster than this ad will be censored.” Lingerie and accessories brand Kiki de Montparnasse, an innovator in the intimacy category when it launched in 2005, is relying on more organic forms of promotion like word of mouth and beauty influencers.
No matter what path a brand takes, promoting sexual wellness products in today’s cultural climate is an increasingly complex challenge. Yet, the very complexity of that problem underscores for many brand founders just how important it is to overcome them. “Fundamentally, we exist to end the stigma around women’s health,” says Welsh. “If we cannot speak openly about our bodies, we do women everywhere a disservice.”
This article has been updated.
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