It’s February and we’ve got hearts in our eyes for all the incredible women we’re interviewing this month! The theme from our Nasty Woman planner for February is sexual health, so what better way to kick things off than an interview with one of the leading voices in Sex Tech? Polly Rodriguez is the CEO of Unbound, an online retailer and manufacturer of wellness products that put women’s sexual pleasure first. Shrill Society talks with Rodriguez about vibrators, beating cancer, and building a different kind of sexual wellness company.

Shrill Society: I love the title tag for Unbound: An online shop for rebellious women. Let’s talk about the role of rebellion in your work and how you wanted Unbound to differ from other sexual wellness companies.

Polly Rodriguez: Women owning their bodies has always been a rebellious act and, in particular, women owning pleasure―whether it’s masturbating or otherwise defining what pleasure looks like for them.

I think Unbound stands out in that our whole goal was to make a category that has been taboo and stigmatized more mainstream, including the design of the product. So not designing things like penises, as revolutionary a concept as that is! [laughs] Historically the industry didn’t have any women in it because of the reputational risk of being a woman in a line of work associated with sex. So you had men designing vibrators and, of course, they were making them look like penises because, well, men are men. We really wanted to elevate the design without having to compromise on the quality of the product or the price. A lot of the supposedly better quality products in our category―vibrators―can cost easily $200. We wanted to cut out the middlemen and distributors and sell directly to consumers, which allowed us to offer a better product at a more affordable price.

And lastly, our brand approach is pretty political. When we first started the company we weren’t. Personally we always were, but it wasn’t until Donald Trump got elected that the company became more openly political. Most notably, we did a Vibes for Congress campaign, where you could send a vibrator to any congressional member of your choice and all of the profits went to Planned Parenthood. We thought maybe a couple hundred people would do it, but close to 2,000 people did. I think that’s a good example of both how our brand is political and rebellious in the nature of what we do.

That’s brilliant. You talked about the design of the products. Unbound just looks different―the second you visit the website. There’s an emphasis on aesthetics and design―vintage vibes, in-your-face graphics. What were some of your visual inspirations when approaching the look of Unbound?

It’s definitely evolved over time. All of the brand personality, I really have to give credit to my co-founder Sarah Jayne and our head designer Kate [Rockett]. I think for us one of the important things that we realized in the marketplace is that a lot of people use women’s bodies to sell the products. Everybody has seen that trashy sex shop where when you walk in there’s images of women in costumes and high heels, big boobs and a full face of makeup. For a lot of us, we felt that wasn’t relatable. Our brand is really an extension of our personalities. We’re still a small team of ten people. We wanted to have all different types of people on our site. And we wanted it to be playful and fun because we have a product that people have a hard time talking about.

There’s just a real disco sexiness when you get on the website! Unbound not only makes and sells products, you also produce fun, sexy, and informative content. Why was it important to incorporate education and storytelling when building the brand?

Well there’s the obvious reason that there just isn’t a lot of really good information out there for people when it comes to sexual pleasure. Then there’s the business answer, which is that female sexual pleasure companies are specifically banned from advertising. So we can’t advertise on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Taboola, or Outbrain. We had to get smart quickly about how we were going to grow as a business. Content and SEO is the one area where we knew people were searching Google for answers when it comes to sexual health, so we had to get good at writing content that would capture those searches because we weren’t allowed to advertise anywhere else. Despite the fact that erectile dysfunction companies don’t face any of those barriers nor do condom companies. So it’s an outdated, sexist policy; but it’s one that’s forced us to get good at education and content, which developed into a brand ethos for us. In a world where only 13 states in America require scientifically and medically backed sexual education in schools, there’s a huge opportunity to provide that information for people.

It’s obvious how thoughtful and knowledgeable you were in constructing your business, but you didn’t just survey the sexual wellness landscape dispassionately. Unbound is part of a personal journey, coming out of a time when you needed to find ways to regain power in your own relationship to sex. Can you talk about your path to Unbound?

It’s no secret at this point that I went through menopause at a young age. At 21, I went through cancer and my doctors told me that radiation treatment―specifically because I had colon cancer―would basically beam through my reproductive organs. So in killing the tumor or shrinking the size of the tumor with radiation, it also killed all of my reproductive organs. They told me I would never have children, but that was really all they said to me. It wasn’t until I was online searching for my symptoms and side effects that I discovered I was going through menopause as well. I felt a lot of things, but most notably I felt like, “Well I guess if my sexuality was important, then my doctors would have brought it up and talked to me about it.” So I felt embarrassed and ashamed to raise that as a quality of life component. Luckily, I had a good friend who was a nurse practitioner and she said, “You know after menopause it’s recommended that most people use lubricant to have sex.” And a lot of cancer patients deal with a dip in libido as well, so she told me to try buying a vibrator. I had a pretty bad shopping experience trying to buy lubricant and a vibrator. I just felt uninformed. So ten years later I worked for a senator, I worked in consulting, I worked at a dating start-up, and I saw an opportunity to be the brand name and the face that could make this category not a dumpster fire of a shopping experience.

It sounds like you’ve received a lot of advice over the years. What’s the best piece of sex advice you’ve gotten that you’d like to share?

Sex advice? Ooh. It’s not a tip, but one philosophical thing I’ve learned is that everybody is looking for permission to explore their own sexuality. And lately, I’ve found myself telling young women, femme, and non-binary people not to wait for permission to acknowledge their sexuality and explore their bodies. Unfortunately, we live in a society where we’re not allowed to be sexually curious and I think collectively we’re all just scared to be vulnerable. As long as you’re willing to be vulnerable, open, and honest, I think that exploring your sexuality is one of the most enjoyable and beautiful things about our bodies. So that’s the heartfelt thing that I think I’ve learned.

Heartfelt is good! So what’s next for Unbound?

We just launched a community component called Area 69. We’ve found there’s a palpable demand for women to talk about sex and they want to find other women to talk about it with. It’s an online and offline platform for sex positive people to spread the message through a bunch of different cool ways and events. We’re also launching a vibrator ring called Palma, which got second place at TechCrunch Disrupt. That proves women in sexual wellness and hardware―we can do all of those things! I’m really excited for that to launch in April, so that’s what’s on the horizon.

Like what you see? Read our previous interview with Daisy Natives designer Sarah Eckett.