Owning Your Sexual Self

149. How the Beauty Industry Influences Sexual Health with Catherine Magee

January 23, 2023 Rachel Maine
Owning Your Sexual Self
149. How the Beauty Industry Influences Sexual Health with Catherine Magee
Show Notes

I have another wonderful guest on with me today, Catherine Magee. She’s here to start the conversation around women's sexual health and pleasure and why we should all be talking about it!

How did she get into the sexual health industry?
I've spent the majority of my career in the beauty industry. One of the reasons I've always loved it is because it really focused on having women build their confidence, feeling beautiful, and doing all these great things for people while not taking it too seriously. I just couldn't believe what a difference there is. In beauty, we are trying to create beautiful brands and beautiful products that improve women's beauty and wellness and make them feel confident. And sexual wellness, particularly personal lubricants, doesn't do that at all.
Every time we talk to somebody about that experience of going down the aisle in the supermarket they feel ashamed as if something is wrong with them. And we just said this should not be the case, we need to change that.

Why is including certain things in your lubricant so important to you?
We create a product that's lubricating and moisturizing and silky but also good for the vagina. What we've learned through this process is the overlap between sexual pleasure and sexual health and how women are using a lubricant because we feel like we need it. But the fact of the matter is we can all improve our sexual pleasure with using this product and by improving our sexual pleasure, we're actually improving our reproductive health.

Why is using Lubricant important?
I think number one, like, let's focus on the pleasure challenge. We know through various studies and statistics that lubricant improves orgasm because you're just reducing any kind of friction. Using lubricant also decreases your chances of having urinary tract infections. Over 80% of urinary tract infections are correlated with sexual intercourse. So for either one of those reasons, it's an easily available product to try and bring into the bedroom.  


Are there any things that you feel the beauty industry has taught us when it comes to sexual health?
I often compare it to mascara, mascara companies don't say, oh, your eyelashes are brittle and dry and they look terrible. They say wear mascara, it'll make your eyelashes thicker and it'll make you feel beautiful and confident. That message Is what the beauty industry, you know, the good brands are communicating and that is not happening in sexual health.


What products do you offer at Playground?
We consider ourselves a science based sexual wellness company. And so our first line of products are libido enhancing, clean personal lubricants. Our one big difference for our water based brand is that a little goes a long way. We use an ingredient that's a silicone like plant based ingredient because we know that women don't like it sticky, and we don't like to reapply, we want it to last a long time. And we thought that's what was not happening, so we made it happen. 


Can men use these products too?
Playground products are for everybody. They're just specially formulated for vaginas because vaginas have so much more complexity to them and we just wanted to be really thoughtful about that. So what I say is if it's safe for a vagina, then it's safe for everything.


I always say we take our products very seriously, but we don't take ourselves very seriously. We say we're up for fun, down for anything. Nice girls finish first. 


Connect with Playground!
Instagram - @Hello.Playground

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