Harry Styles has officially entered the sex toy market. The Fine Line hitmaker announced the newest offering from his Pleasing lifestyle range on Thursday, July 24, sending shockwaves across the internet.
Pleasing has, until now, featured mainly beauty and fragrance products, like neatly packaged nail polishes and moisturising balms, as well as two perfumes.
But this week, Styles made a decidedly large leap from ‘family-friendly’ territory towards sexual wellness. To announce the new products, a video shared via the Pleasing Instagram account, shows the singer sketching a note that says “Please yourself like you mean it.” The products include a double-ended vibrator (£51) and lube (£19, pleasing.com), launched on July 25.
This was simply too much for the Harry Styles fandom to handle: a short story about the singer being a sex toy shop owner has already been updated on the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own.
Such is the magnitude of Styles’s impact, even without having released new music in the last three years.
So has his entrance into the sexual wellness market triggered a celebrity sex toy boom? He’s already joining the likes of Lily Allen, Dakota Johnson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Cara Delevingne, who made their foray into the sexual wellness market well before Styles.
But, up until now, the celebrity sex toy market has been a relatively small space. Especially compared to the celebrity beauty brand market, which is practically overflowing with smooth-skinned A-listers.
The success of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty and Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics can be held largely responsible for the resulting deluge of celebrity beauty brands that flooded the market.
The celebrity beauty brand field is now widely considered to be oversaturated. A few latecomers have survived or even thrived (R.e.m beauty by Ariana Grande and Rhode by Hailey Bieber are notable exceptions). But celebrities have generally learned that by 2025, if they haven’t already launched their beauty brand, they missed the boat.
Could sex toys be the next money-making vessel, then? It might not seem like an obvious choice, considering how younger generations are reportedly less horny than ever. Gen Z in particular is known for liking skincare, not sex. In an article written for Dazed this year, writer Serena Smith rightfully asked: “Is anyone having sex after their 12-step night time skincare routine?”
On X (formerly Twitter), a now-infamous tweet declares: “Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny.”
But Harry Styles might be about to change that. “The fact that icons like Harry Styles are lending their name to vibrators helps carry this category into everyday conversation, breaking through the censorship and taboo that has surrounded it for decades,” says Samantha Marshall, Head of Brand at Smile Makers Collection.
Marshall acknowledges that Harry Styles’s main fanbase — Gen Zs and Zillennials — may often be painted as having less sex, but counters: “That narrative tends to ignore the growing embrace of self-pleasure,” she says. “The response to this collaboration shows a real hunger among younger people to understand their bodies, own their pleasure, and build confidence in doing so.”
She even believes celebrity sex toys may have an even more lasting pull than beauty brands. “Celebrity crossovers from fragrance and beauty to pleasure matter because it’s an indicator that sexual wellness isn’t a fleeting trend, it’s here to stay,” Marshall says.
“Unlike a seasonal scent, a lipstick shade or the latest fitness craze, pleasure is constant and should be more mainstream.”
After all, skincare might be in at the moment, but pleasure is forever.
