{"id":696270,"date":"2026-06-10T20:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T20:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/696270\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T20:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T20:02:16","slug":"the-beauty-industry-is-taking-over-sexual-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/696270\/","title":{"rendered":"The beauty industry is taking over sexual health"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which meant 100 million dollars in cuts to federal Medicaid reimbursements. This major financial loss led to Planned Parenthood clinics<\/a> shutting down across the country, leaving many without essential sexual healthcare<\/a>. As a means of survival, the Planned Parenthood Mar Monte affiliate, which consists of thirty health centres in California and Nevada, announced an expansion of services, including perimenopause care, IV hydration and cosmetic injectables \u2013 yes, like Botox<\/a> and fillers<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This turn towards beauty was met with both praise and concern when it was announced earlier this year. Some saw it was a crucial way to make up for the loss of income and stay afloat. For others, it reaffirmed the larger, alarming message that sexual healthcare<\/a> isn\u2019t worthy of its own funding without being cushioned by the beauty industry, or that cosmetic tweakments should be considered essential healthcare for women. To make matters even more complicated, the idea of adding aesthetic services onto Planned Parenthood\u2019s already extensive roster of care actually predates the recent revenue loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about providing some of these new services for years,\u201d says Andrew Adams, chief of staff at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte. For Adams, a lightbulb moment came when one of his patients mentioning experiencing botched filler as a result of at-home injectables \u2013 a solution she turned to owing to the unaffordability of med spas. \u201cWe realised our patients were getting it and they wanted us to provide it. We really were trying to be responsive to our patients and their needs.\u201d But is offering cosmetic injectables at places like Planned Parenthood addressing needs \u2013 or creating them?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t know that you should be getting tested between each new partner [or] every three months, if you don\u2019t know what your birth control options are, you\u2019re already in a space where somebody has the answers to those questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to critics, the decision to include injectables at Planned Parenthood risks watering down our understanding of \u201cessential\u201d sexual healthcare services. If cosmetic options in sexual health clinics become the norm, sex educator Tara Jones says, the worry is that \u201cwe\u2019re just telling people generally who are assigned female at birth that they need to constantly be investing in their physical appearance.\u201d The growing fear around the blurred lines between cosmetics and sexual health is valid, but it\u2019s worth noting that injectables, like those now offered at Planned Parenthood, have many uses, including gender affirming care and migraine suppression.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By marketing botox at $9 per unit \u2013 considerably lower than the standard $10-$15 per unit range at local med spas \u2013 Planned Parenthood has two goals: to encourage harm reduction and to fund its clinic abilities. \u201cRegardless of your personal opinions on things like injectables, these are people who are going to be qualified to do that work, who are going to be able to do it at a lower price point than a lot of these med spas,\u201d says Jones. And with 85 per cent of their patients using Medi-Cal, California\u2019s Medicaid program, this new endeavour may be able to create more access to trusted injectable services for some current patients; that said, the financial success of this service expansion will likely fall on its ability to bring in new clientele.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood\u2019s expansion of services mirrors the growing connection between the sexual health and beauty spaces. And, although it\u2019s too early to definitively say whether or not this service expansion could function as a roadmap for other US organisations at risk of similar funding cuts, it\u2019s possible it could be a lifeline to deliver crucial health services like abortion and gender affirming care, while also evolving alongside patient needs. As sexual and reproductive healthcare continues to face relentless attacks from the US government, depending on profits from the cosmetic industry could create a new norm in the way we conceptualise sexual healthcare.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One positive that could come out of this industry crossover may be the destigmatisation of sexual healthcare at large, especially if Planned Parenthood is able to broaden its clientele through its new aesthetic care options. \u201cI feel like the barrier for a lot of people is [that] it\u2019s inconvenient,\u201d Jones says about Planned Parenthood services like STI testing.\u00a0 \u201cIf you don\u2019t know that you should be getting tested between each new partner [or] every three months, or if you don’t know what your birth control options are, then you\u2019re already in a space where somebody has the answers to those questions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, if we are doing the same thing that we do with the fashion industry as we do with the beauty industry when it comes to sexual health, we\u2019re sharing messages around products that people don\u2019t need, and bodies that they don\u2019t need to have, when their bodies are great the way they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

As cultural conversations around wellness have begun to embrace sexual health as a key player in overall wellbeing, the market is increasingly ripe with the newest sextech and intimate hygiene add-ons (the sexual wellness market is projected to reach 68.59 billion by 2035<\/a>). While the merging began with the rebranding of sex toys as self-care, the growth of the sexual wellness category, and the stocking of vibrators and lubricants in the beauty aisles of pharmacies, now it\u2019s evolved to encompass weakments and injectables. Vaginal tightening serums<\/a> and even vaginal fillers are no longer considered novelties. There are at-home LED devices for \u201cvaginal rejuvenation\u201d; polynucleotide and hyaluronic acid injections for the vulva, and radio-frequency treatments that heat the internal and external vaginal tissue to stimulate collagen. As the aesthetic-slash-sexual health industry continues to boom, so do opportunities to capitalise on people\u2019s insecurities around their bodies, which makes for a complicated future for sexual wellness.<\/p>\n

According to Jones, the merging of sexual wellness with beauty trends makes it clear that the goalpost is always changing. \u201cUltimately, if we are doing the same thing that we do with the fashion industry as we do with the beauty industry when it comes to sexual health, we\u2019re sharing messages around products that people don\u2019t need, and around bodies that they don\u2019t need to have, when their bodies are great the way they are,\u201d sex educator Danielle Bezalel tells Dazed. Interest in labiaplasties<\/a>, for example, has skyrocketed in the past decade alongside a sharp increase in genital insecurity<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Each person has the right to change their body as they see fit, but it\u2019s worth investigating the forces pushing aesthetics as the new face of sexual health. It may be an unfortunate reality, but clinics like Planned Parenthood shouldn\u2019t have to offer cosmetic tweakments to stay afloat. The government\u2019s regressive approach to sexual health has granted the beauty industry an opportunity to turn a profit; if funding is diminished, it will only sink its claws in deeper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which meant 100…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[1029,3980,3979,3981,3982,3983,3984,3985,3976,2695,97,252,253,3977,3978,216],"class_list":["post-696270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-art","tag-dazed","tag-dazed-confused","tag-dazed-confused-magazine","tag-dazed-and-confused","tag-dazed-and-confused-magazine","tag-dazedconfused","tag-dazeddigital","tag-fashion","tag-film","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ideas","tag-ideas-sharing-network","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}