What Femmes Need Now
In a culture this hard on girls & women, softness is a radical offering.
What do we tell girls coming of age today?
That's the question that's been tugging at me since January, when the Justice Department released the first blackened pages of the Epstein files. Just three months later, CNN published a months-long investigation into an online "rape academy" — a network of millions of men teaching one another how to drug and assault their partners while evading detection.
The horrible poisons of the patriarchy coursing through our society have never been so evident.
The question is, what can we do about it?
We may bristle at the latest news. Doom scroll in numb astonishment at a stream of abuses. But we cannot succumb to hopelessness or despair. The cruelty and violence we are witnessing must not be allowed to corrupt the miracle of our souls embodied.
We have to keep asking: what do girls and women need now?
For most of recorded history, that question has never been asked seriously enough. The so-called “Second Sex” has been handed scripts: be quiet, be small, be perfect, be sexy. The demands may have changed with the eras — from modesty to free love, from girlboss to polyamorist — but the through-line remains. Contort yourself to fit inside the acceptable boxes of a sexist society or be pushed to the invisible edges — and used as a resource.
Instead, what if we not only asked but created answers to the question: What would she want, if she felt completely safe and free? Because when girls and women feel completely safe, supported, and truly free, the world will be utterly transformed.
A big idea, an small soft landing.
The idea for Venus Matters came to me one afternoon in 2011, while I was looking for something to protect the sheets during my period and a subtle wave of unease hit me. Not embarrassment, something closer to bewilderment: Why, in the vast marketplace of the 21st Century, had no one bothered to design something beautiful and practical for a body that bleeds?
When a twelve-year-old girl wakes up in the middle of the night and finds her cycle has begun, what she tells herself may echo in her mind for the next forty years. If she thinks: something is wrong with me, it’s gross, I’m dirty, she'll shrink and contract. If she learns: my body is doing something miraculous and I have all the support I need, she'll relax and rise into her power.
Venus Mats were made for that moment. For a heavy night before a busy day, when she doesn't want to worry about staining the sheets. For the first weeks after a baby comes, when her body —and her baby’s, too— overflows in ways no one warned her about. For her expansive pleasure with no apology needed.
In a culture that teaches a girl her that body is something to be feared and managed, handing her a Venus Mat opens a whole different conversation. It says: your body is not a problem. Your cycle is not an impediment. Your need for softness is not weakness. The world won't always give you a soft place to land — but here is one.
Before we shipped our first prototypes, I made a prayer: that no abuse of any kind would ever occur on a Venus Mat. Eleven years in, that prayer has only deepened. It’s why we donate a portion of our profits to organizations helping to stop sex-trafficking and abuse. It's why this brand will never stoop to being titillating or cheap — because Venus Matters has never been about what’s profitable but what do women and girls actually need in bed and beyond?
Venus Matters because vaginas are amazing. Because women are magnificent. Because body fluids are nothing to be ashamed about. Because every girl learning to manage her moon, every mother-to-be, every woman in the full bloom of her erotic life, every grandmother preparing for the last mysterious exit, deserves so much more from us.
One product can’t fix the patriarchy and I'm not going to pretend it can. No mat, no motto, no candle, no carefully crafted essay can undo three thousand years of neglect and harm.
But we can give ourselves and each other soft places to land. We can call the friend, praise the lover, bring a meal to the mother, and hand the daughter a dozen roses on the day of her first period.
Because she deserves softness. She deserves care.
She deserves to lie down on a bed of roses.
~Jules Cazedessus
Founder & CEO
Venus Matters
Through this Flower Moon Weekend, Venus Mats are 15% off with the code SOFTER15. Please be in touch if you cannot afford a Venus Mat, our margins are small but we want every femme who needs one to have a soft landing. 🙏🏽
