Dakota Johnson familiarized herself with all kinds of bedroom interplay when she signed on for Fifty Shades of Grey just a few years ago. Thanks to the billion dollar franchise, we equate her name with things like vibrators, floggers (one of which she still owns), spreader bars, and even Ben Wa balls. It’s perhaps only natural that for her new endeavor Maude, Johnson would be focusing on the “sexual wellness” aspect of these types of items, traditionally called toys. According to Johnson, they are anything but toys and she is working to "destigmatize" those items in society.
In fact, Dakota Johnson has become both a creative and investor for Maude, a company with a sleek eye for design that is creating inclusive products for couples of all genders and ethnicities. The company’s next step seems to be tackling the stigma of sex toys, with Johnson herself remarking to InStyle that the products the company is creating, including vibrators, are more intimacy "tools" than anything else.
With our This Is Not A Toy campaign, we aim to activate hearts and minds in an effort to destigmatize sexual and intimate tools. Often the use of language surrounding sexual products is antiquated, gender-specific, and belittling.
Dakota Johnson has referred to items for the bedroom as “toys” in past interviews related to Fifty Shades of Grey, but people can change their perspectives over time, and that may be what happened after Johnson learned more about the work Maude was doing and came on board. In this case, Johnson and her business partner want to challenge what they feel are antiquated ideas about items like vibrators, noting they should be more for “well-being.” In fact, Maude creator and CEO Éva Goicochea also noted more specifically:
For so long, vibrators and devices have been called 'toys', a connotation that trivializes their basic benefit: to provide stimulation that improves sexual wellness and feelings of well-being. By reducing them to juvenile novelties, people's needs and satisfaction are often being unmet and overlooked. Moreover, stigmas are being perpetuated, A vibe is not a toy — it is an essential.
Though the comments are new, Dakota Johnson has been all over this concept since she joined Maude in 2020. A previous post to her social media with Eva Goicochea highlights how much the Fifty Shades of Grey star cares about the “ethos” of the brand.
We’ll have to wait and see what else Dakota Johnson, Eva Goicochea and Maude bring to the table, but for now jumping into sex essentials is an interesting next step for the Fifty Shades of Grey star. As for the world of acting, next up you can catch her in The Lost Daughter, which will mar The Dark Knight actress Maggie Gyllenhaal’s feature length directorial debut.
