“I don’t feel uncomfortable talking about sex and gender equality—I find it so vital,” Dakota Johnson tells Vogue. She’s sharing a Zoom call from New York with Maude founder Éva Goicochea discussing their curatorial debut Modern Sex: 100 Years of Design and Decency within the Museum of Sex’s new Miami outpost. Johnson signed on as co-creative director for the intimate wellness brand in 2020, and just a year later she and Goicochea were in early discussions of the project. What started as an idea for a coffee table book grew into an entire exhibition (officially opening next month) showcasing how pop culture, conversations, and marketing surrounding sexual health have evolved over a century.
Together, Johnson and Goicochea have already made history in the industry by bringing Maude to Sephora as the first sexual wellness brand sold on the megaretailer’s site last year, and on physical store shelves this spring. Within Modern Sex: 100 Years of Design and Decency, they worked with curatorial partners of the museum to physically walk through decades of design, objects, and marketing relating to sexual health products. “They’re the ones that wrangled historians and experts, and they brought it to life with us,” says Goicochea of collaborating with the team at The Museum of Sex on exhibition. “You walk through the room in a timeline and even the wallpaper is from that era—it’s not a replica.”
Why Dakota Johnson Isnt Going to Stop Talking About Sex Anytime Soon
The entire process has been remote, “so when we see it in person, it’ll be the first time it comes alive,” Goicochea explains. They ended up featuring over 500 elements, from discreet art deco prophylactic envelopes to works by sex educator and feminist Shere Hite. Johnson narrated and produced The Disappearance of Shere Hite documentary, so her inclusion felt like yet another element of serendipitous sex education. “Dakota and I were just talking about this, but much of what Shere Hite did was to reflect back to people what was really happening—she was just holding a mirror to everyone,” Goicochea says. “I think this exhibit is meant to hold a mirror to where we’ve been. It’s a historical record more than us saying, this is our opinion on sex. This is not opinion, this is fact. This is what it looked like.”
When posed with the question of whether she feels a responsibility to speak to the importance of sexual wellness, Johnson counts herself as an advocate for the cause. “I guess because I have a platform and I’m able to talk about it, I feel like I should,” she says. “But I also care, and I find it really interesting, so it’s not like I am just spewing information. I really think about all of this and I consider it very thoughtfully, and I have opinions. It does keep landing in my lap, so I’m like, Well, I guess I’m sort of meant to be doing this.’”
The best from Met Gala 2025, red carpet updates, top fashion stories and celebrity style. All in your inbox.
Éva Goicochea: Yes. A hundred years ago there were vibrators, but they had to be marketed as face massagers, or you’ll see in the exhibit they called them “cure-alls.” So what’s really strange is that over a hundred years later, we’re back to talking about it as wellness. And what happened in between is just really fascinating, which relates a lot to when birth control came out and how people perceive sex and all of the laws and et cetera. But yeah, a hundred years ago you could find vibrator ads, which you’ll see in the exhibit, and they speak about it almost in the same way that we’re talking about it now.
Why Dakota Johnson Isnt Going to Stop Talking About Sex Anytime Soon
Jeanne Canto
What did you find was the most exciting part of this process, ultimately?
ÉG: Dakota and I have talked about this a lot, and I’m sure you’ll get into Shere Hite a little bit Dakota, but reflecting on the industry and where it’s been, all of the political angles, the social angles, the stigmas, the restrictions. Obviously that’s what the exhibit’s about, but it’s really eye opening and it’s also very galvanizing in terms of thinking about why Maude should exist and what its future is. And it’s exciting to see. I think this is the first time somebody, just an outsider can look at where it’s come from and why we got here and why we all have accepted what we’re given in the drugstore aisle or the restrictions, et cetera.
DJ: Yeah, I think there’s something about this being a visual exhibit that when they see that there’s actual objects that existed, it lands differently. When you think about what has happened over a hundred years in this space of sexual wellness and you think about working with historians that the museum wanted to work with to curate this exhibit, there’s actual physical objects that make you go, oh, have we come very far? Are we okay? Is there really advancement in the world of sexual wellness? I guess it’s different when you read about history versus actually seeing that it physically existed.
Dakota, I would love to hear how the doc you worked on, The Disappearance of Shere Hite, ended up dovetailing into this.
DJ: I mean, it’s funny because I never had a moment where I was like, I’m going to really work hard in the sexual wellness space. It just keeps happening. I’m so interested in this journey for every gender. All we have are our minds and our bodies, so why aren’t we talking about that more? Why aren’t we figuring out how to treat those things really, really well and take care of them really, really well? And I guess with Shere Hite, because of the work that I do with Maude, Nicole Newnham, the director, came to my production company TeaTime and asked us to produce the movie and if I’d be willing to narrate the film. And I was like, ‘Of course, this woman, she’s a legend.’ She is an angelic force of nature that was just totally blotted out of history it seems, and it is madness to me. Shere was showing quantifiable data that really told a story about women and female sexuality and the female orgasm. And she was like just in some cases physically silenced on talk shows where people are just like, stop talking. And it’s just so mind bending to me. I don’t know if we’ve even come that far these days. I feel so grateful that I can speak freely about sexual wellness.
ÉG: I think the undercurrent is always gender equity. I’ve said this before, but I wasn’t seeking a public figure to be at Maude. When Dakota and I got a chance to meet, I was like, ‘This is the only person I would want to be a part of this company.’ Because, really, the through line is bravery for the subject of gender equity, which this is really about. All of this is really about that, even if Maude is an inclusive company, I think creating a table where everyone’s welcome is actually radical in and of itself, especially in this category, especially coming out of the nineties and two thousands. So it was really exciting to just watch the film as a viewer and know that it was also connected.
DJ: There’s Shere Hite in the Museum of Sex as well.
ÉG: Yeah, her book will be in the exhibit. The team had already brought the book in which was interesting. Obviously they know Dakota and I are the ones pitching the idea, but they had already wanted to include the book, so it really was kind of serendipitous.
What are you looking forward to most with as you bring this forward to not just your typical audience, but really to the world?
DJ: I hope that it just sparks a conversation and some thought within people’s minds. I think we’ve been programmed for so long to not talk about sex and not talk about sexual wellness. And I feel like presenting this information to the world in a really beautiful way, in a really cool new museum is just an interesting way to sort of subversively spark a conversation and get people to think about their own versions of sexual wellness and how they consider sex and self care.
ÉG: I think the biggest thing to note is that you heard me talk about how we’re restricted by meta, right? I think all these restrictions mean that it’s up to the consumer to demand better and the consumer to create change and ask to see these things and to have these conversations at their dinner tables. And so really, hopefully this context of history will make people realize change needs to happen. I think there are other categories and industries where they’re like, we’ve been doing this the same way forever, Why are we not? You see that in food and how people have talked about where their food comes from. It’s the same thing here. People need to be able to access information and products so that they can really own their own wellness and their own health. This is not just wellness, this is a really critical part to being human.
