What Is the "Sexual Wellness" Industry Trying to Tell Us?

From Kourtney Kardashian's new "intimacy" gummies to a luxe "sensual body care" brand, consumer goods are signalling that our desires are dictated by trends.

Hello and welcome to Many Such Cases.

Last night, I tried to go to The Box. I’ve never been before, though I’ve heard a good deal about it. It’s a nightclub off in lower Manhattan known for its debaucherous, no-phones-allowed burlesque performances that are said to get more extreme as the night goes on, going from sexy to bizarre to downright gross. I’ve never been in part because I’ve seen this sort of thing before, but mainly because it is expensive and there’s a line. My friend

Camille Sojit Pejcha

, who invited me last night, says she was charged $32 for a shot the other time she went. I’d rather whip myself with barbed wire than pay that, nevermind having to be assessed by a bouncer beforehand.

On this particular evening, though, we were on a guest list. Camille had been invited by a sexy new “sensual body care” line called Mienne, and the party was said to feature Julia Fox. The party began at 9, but when we arrived a little after 10 there was already a line 30-something deep. We got in it, and after about half an hour of zero movement, decided to just call it a night. So, I still don’t know exactly what happens in The Box or whether I would have been charged that much for a drink, and maybe I never will.

But all that is a bit beside the point. Let’s talk about Mienne. The brand promotes itself as “Skincare formulas for everyday eroticism” and sells $55 bottles of “sex serum” (also known as lube), $75 candles that melt into a massage oil and a $45 bar of soap. It all is admittedly very sexy looking. I’d love to have it on my shelf. Is any of it necessary? Is it solving the problem of our cultural sexlessness? Probably not. That’d be a lot to ask of a body wash. It’s all very frivolous, but I can admit that spending money on a beautiful product can indeed aid in the sense of ritual that ventures into the erotic territory, at least for some. Nobody needs nice things to have sex, but hey, I like nice things, too!

What I’m most interested in here is the Julia Fox of it all. In May 2024, Fox said she had been celibate for two and a half years and had no intention of changing that any time soon. On July 9th of that year (my birthday, by the way) she also came out as a lesbian. Since then, there hasn’t been much public information about her sex life. It’s not any of my business. Still, the celibacy narrative did make it all a bit surprising when Fox became the face not only of Mienne, but of Kourtney Kardashian’s new Lemme Play Daily Intimacy Gummies.

Per WWD: “‘From Day One, there were a ton of people in our core consumer base interested in sexual wellness and frustrated by the lack of options, and especially frustrated by the lack of innovation in the category,’ said Lemme cofounder Simon Huck, adding consumers were discussing this type of product on TikTok, Instagram and through the brand’s email surveys. ‘[They were] looking for something that felt efficacious, that used clinically studied ingredients, that also used traditional botanicals, had a mixture of both worlds... ‘Kourtney is really excited about this category, because there’s also a little bit of stigma around sexual pleasure and sexual wellness, and there shouldn’t be, quite frankly, and it’s such an important pillar to women’s health,’ he said.”

The ingredients are said to work by increasing blood flow, energy and mood. Again, I guess, sure. Maybe eating a gummy offers some sort of predominantly placebo effect that makes you horny. Maybe the fact that it’s from such a mainstream brand sold in, like, Target makes women more comfortable buying it. If it helps people who were not otherwise fucking begin to fuck again and enjoy it, it’s hard to knock it.

Still, do we really think we need Kourtney Kardashian to save our libidos? Do we need to make her wealthier in order to do it? And isn’t there perhaps even something sinister about her banking on our sexual insecurities and lifelessness in the process?

It seems to me that much of this “sexual wellness industry” serves as a panacea for a problem somewhat of its own creation. It all stems from this same effort to detach our desires and our bodies from our own being so that they may become commodifiable.

Which brings be back to the Julia Fox of it all. I again do not know if she is still practicing celibacy, or however she even defines that. Her working with these erotic product campaigns nevertheless places her squarely back in the category of sexual being. And isn’t that convenient? To have someone who swore off sex to now promote a product dedicated to it is the ultimate endorsement.

“It’s not about romance, it’s about circulation,” Kourtney tells Julia in the ad after Julia reminds her she’s “three years out of the game.” Here again desire is detached, not something to be experienced but instead something that happens mechanically within the body.

To be fair, Viagra and other male sexual performance drugs function and are promoted the same way. I’m suspicious of how products like Blue Chew are shaping the perception of male sexuality, too. But this connection to celibacy and these products points to a specific conclusion: our relationship with sexuality and desire is easily subjected to the whim of trends. This isn’t new — look toward any era of history and we’ll see different attitudes dictated by different trends. Yet when it’s happening to us, when we’re living in the trends themselves, it seems like something we tend to forget. Celibacy, for example, is obviously not a momentary trend for plenty of the people who practice it. But for a moment in pop culture, it was. This “sexual wellness” product-focused moment should be interpreted the same way. Sexuality is hip again because it has presented an opportunity to sell something.

If that all makes people happier and healthier, so what? Maybe it’s all just something to be thinking about before we press “add to cart.” Maybe we consider whether our want for something is really our own. Trends change. So too do our desires.