The journey to change what pleasure looks like

This journey started with a bottle of lube and it will end without one.

What's in it is very important, yes, but how it looks speaks a thousand words.

Art and architecture for centuries have held an extremely important place in political history from Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party reclaiming a woman's place in the male-dominated canon of history, the Bauhaus movement rejecting class hierarchy through simplicity. I believe product design can hold the same power. The packaging of a product we might use every day can affirm, invite, dignify. If pleasure has become a social movement, then why can't its packaging push this movement forward?

When I started creating My Pearl Co.'s products, I wasn't just thinking about its ingredients (though each one was heavily researched and tested), I was thinking about how a product can make someone feel. What it would mean to have lube next to the keys in my purse, out next to my skincare or candle on my bedside table, not just as an act of empowerment, but because I think it's just as beautiful as those products. That it reflects care. That it reflects me just like other products I buy time and time again. Designing a product with dignity means asking: what does it look like to hold a product and feel seen, not scrutinized? To feel celebrated, not sold to?

Utimately, it's about storytelling. It's rewriting the quiet, but powerful message we've received for years: that pleasure is shameful and a problem to fix rather than something to nurture. It's about putting beauty where we've been taught to expect secrecy. It can say you are allowed to want, to feel, to advocate for your own pleasure. It says this matters.